


let the snow fall

by treepyful (treeperson)



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: (dw it's just weed), Blizzards & Snowstorms, Completely Plot-Free tm, David takes care of people, Fluff, Friendship, Gen, Huddling For Warmth, M/M, Music, Patrick does too, Post-Canon, Power Outage, Recreational Drug Use, Slice of Life, Snowed In, Stevie just wants to steal their fireplace, Teasing as Communication, Teasing as Flirting, Teasing as a Love Language, alcohol consumption, dance lessons, just a lot of teasing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-28
Updated: 2020-12-13
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:41:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 26,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27764650
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/treeperson/pseuds/treepyful
Summary: Based on the paragraph from my ficNagging Feeling: February brought both Clint Brewer’s birthday and the snowstorm of the century, burying the entire county in almost two metres of snow. With the roads impassable and the hydro out, Patrick and David called Clint from where they were hunkered down in their living room, sharing blankets and breath and turns feeding the fireplace. Then David called Alexis and they chatted about her week while Patrick snuggled against his cashmere sweater, listening to their easy camaraderie with a warmth in his chest that could outlast any winter storm.Or: David and Patrick (and eventually Stevie) weather a blizzard and subsequent power outage.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose, Stevie Budd & David Rose, Stevie Budd & Patrick Brewer
Comments: 96
Kudos: 156





	1. Day Minus One

**Author's Note:**

> I’m going to post this slightly earlier than I otherwise would. I don’t like publishing things that aren’t 100% done, editing and all, but I feel the need to put some comfy goodness out into the world.
> 
> This is a fluffy slice-of-life fic set during a blizzard and subsequent power outage because I love me a good storm. Don’t expect plot as there is none to speak of. (Seriously. Not a drop. Nothing of substance happens, but that’s kinda the point.)
> 
> This is complete, much longer than planned, and decidedly unbeta’d (mea culpa). Updates every few days – basically, as I go through final edits.
> 
> Title adapted from everyone’s favourite: “[Brighter Than Sunshine](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bpDNfwIrx1M)” by Aqualung.

It wasn’t that David didn’t believe all the meteorologists when they warned of the coming storm and its associated snowfall amounts and freezing rain and wind and general winter unpleasantness, it was just that he assumed this storm wouldn’t be all that different from the others he had survived in his time in Schitt’s Creek. For the four winters he’d spent in this _delightful_ little town, there was always at least one weather event that resulted in a night without power, a morning without work, and Ronnie shilling her snowblower out to the whole neighbourhood for a pretty penny. It was still a little thrilling, maybe a little scary, when winter roared down over their hamlet, but David felt it was a bit old hat by now.

So when Patrick came home from an unscheduled morning trip to Brebner’s with a heavily laden car, David couldn’t help but feel he was over preparing.

“Did you leave anything on the shelves for anyone else?” David asked from the doorway, watching Patrick load himself up with cloth totes and slam the trunk closed. His uggs were _not_ rated for outside use, thanks.

“Wasn’t much left before I got there,” Patrick grunted, dropping the bags on the welcome mat and greeting David with a kiss. “People are really freaking out.”

David carried the bags into the kitchen while Patrick stripped off his outerwear. “Are you sure you don’t count yourself among those freaking out? This is a lot, love.” He opened a particularly heavy bag. “Beans and… propane? Are we becoming hermits? Mountain men? I don’t think I’m cut out for that sort of life, sorry to say.”

“It’s not a _lot_ , it’s enough. We’re due a regular shop in a couple days anyway, plus this storm is looking to be huge.” Patrick appeared in the kitchen doorway, ruffling a hand through his hair to settle it after being under a toque. “ _Huge_ huge. We might lose hydro for a few days. Road access, too.”

David paused midway through putting a jug of milk in the fridge. “A few days?” he repeated, blinking at Patrick in disbelief. Coming from almost anyone else, David would have brushed a comment like that off with little thought, but Patrick wasn’t prone to exaggeration.

Patrick hummed an acknowledgement, digging a couple loaves of bread out of another bag. “Very possibly. The forecast looks intense.”

“Oh. Huh.” Patrick turned to give him a curious look, hands full of cans, and David shook his head. “I guess thought this was going to be just another winter storm,” he said, finally putting the milk in the fridge and closing the door.

“I mean, that’s always possible,” Patrick shrugged. “Weather forecasts are just educated guesses. But it’s better to be safe and sound than hungry and cold. Were you around for the ice storm? Oh, no,” he answered his own question. “You probably would’ve been at school in BC, I think. January, ninety-eight?”

David nodded, thinking back to being fourteen and seeing his classroom half empty from students stuck on the east coast. “I flew out from Toronto on the Saturday and the storm hit on Sunday.”

Patrick hummed, crouching to put cans away in the cupboard. “We only caught the edge of it at home, but the hydro was down for a week because the damage was so bad everywhere else. It left a lasting impression, to say the least.” He gestured at the grocery bags at their feet. “I’d never been so cold and bored in my life. Even books were only really good during daylight hours, which were kinda limited in early January.”

David looked at the bags, mind racing with increasingly worrying possibilities. The pipes could burst, they could run out of food, they could get hypothermia, they might have a medical emergency and not be able to get to a hospital, the chimney could fail and give them carbon monoxide poisoning, they might go all _The Shining_ on each other, they could _die_...

Patrick, clearly picking up on something in his demeanour, stepped over the mess of cloth and food to slide his arms around David’s waist, tucking his hands into the tight back pockets of his distressed jeans. “It’ll be fine, David,” he said, and David forced his attention away from catastrophizing and instead focused on his husband’s upturned face. “We have plenty of food, a fireplace with wood to burn, a recently inspected house in good condition, and more batteries than you could shake a flashlight at.” He leaned in for a kiss and David accepted it gratefully, relaxing into Patrick’s solid presence.

Resting their foreheads together, David let out a slow breath. “Okay,” he said, draping his arms over Patrick’s shoulders. “Sorry. I just wasn’t expecting this. It took me by surprise.”

“No need to apologise.” Patrick slid his hands along David’s waist, rubbing his thumbs over his hipbones. “I’m sorry we didn’t talk about this earlier. I just assumed you’d seen the update this morning.”

“You know I find checking winter weather reports depressing.”

“True,” Patrick conceded, smirking. “You good to keep unpacking? Still lots to go.”

“See, I told you it was a lot.”

Patrick just shook his head and kissed him.

* * *

They spend the rest of the day prepping for the storm, which took a lot more work than David was expecting – home ownership was not as glamourous as he’d always been told it was, though he suspected that the lack of paid help played a large part in his reality check. Patrick had made a list of things they needed to do before the storm hit, the extensive nature of which simultaneously increased and decreased David’s anxiety with its dual implications of impending doom and Patrick’s blizzard-related expertise.

Some items on the list were things that David had thought of himself, like collecting candles and flashlights into one place or filling buckets with water so they could flush the toilet. Others David wouldn’t have thought of until hindsight became 20/20, like stacking firewood by the back door for easy access or stashing the shovels and Patrick’s snowshoes in the kitchen instead of the shed. Each task completed brought them one step closer to being ready, but also one step closer to being ready for _the storm of the century_ (thanks, Weather Network), which was stressful.

Some of the things on the list, however, were stress-inducing all by themselves, regardless of the circumstances surrounding them.

“Okay, explain to me again why you’re on the roof?” David called from his spot on _solid ground_ , where people were supposed to stay. “I don’t think I was listening properly the first time. Because this just seems like a daredevil stunt and I’m really not a fan.”

He could hear the amused note in Patrick’s reply. “We need to make sure the chimney is clear, which means checking the cap.” David watched in terror as Patrick strolled confidently across the shingles toward the brick chimney.

“And this couldn’t have been done by a professional?” David finally gave in and pinched his eyes closed, hoping that the sound of the love of his life crashing two storeys to the frozen ground would be less traumatising than the sight.

“Probably, but not before tomorrow. If we want a fire, this needs to be done.” There were a few rattling sounds, some shuffling sounds, and then silence. David’s heart felt like it was going to beat out of his chest.

“David.” Patrick’s voice was closer than it was before. Opening his eyes, David looked up to see Patrick perched on the edge of the roof, near the ladder. “I’m coming down.”

“Oh. Okay.” David held the ladder stable as Patrick made his way back to earth, and then immediately wrapped him in a hug. Patrick _oof_ ed slightly but returned the embrace, smiling when David leaned back to rub his hands up and down Patrick’s arms.

“Safe and sound, David,” he said, and David did not like how gentle his tone was even if he appreciated it at the same time. “And the chimney is clear, so we’re good to go.”

“Good, good. Let’s go inside. It’s cold out here.”

* * *

The evening was spent downloading music and movies onto their phones and the shared tablet, bulking up their offline libraries in anticipation of days without proper internet access. Patrick dug his crank radio out from his camping gear, which David mocked heartily, and added it to the pile of ‘probably useful’ stuff that had accumulated in the front hall.

David flexed his growing culinary skills by making a big batch of soup for dinner, filling it with pasta and vegetables and the rest of last night’s ham. They ate while watching a couple episodes of their latest binge show, then portioned out the rest into containers to freeze in preparation for the expected power outage.

In bed that night, David found himself lying awake, staring up at the ceiling and unconsciously straining to hear any evidence of the storm starting up. There was a sense of anticipation that he couldn’t shake, something that crackled across his brain like a warped, slightly unpleasant version of Christmas Eve, waiting in nervous expectation for the sky to rip open and trap them in their little house for some unknown length of time. When a glance at his phone showed an hour that was far too late, he shook himself and deliberately put all thoughts of the storm out of his head. Bring it, winter.

Carefully rolling over, David spooned up against Patrick’s back and focused on breathing in his warm, familiar scent and – eventually, slowly – faded into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ARE Y’ALL READY? Let’s do this.  
> 
> 
>   1. Patrick says “hydro” to mean electricity, which is a very Ontarian thing to do. David says “power” because he’s spent so much of his life outside of Ontario.
>   2. Don’t be Patrick – either get a pro to check your chimney or tie off properly with a harness so you don’t fall to your death and/or give your spouse a heart attack. *pats Patrick’s head*
> 



	2. Day Zero

When David woke up the next morning, the sky was a clear blue with nary a cloud to be seen. Feeling slightly disappointed and a little silly for it, he followed the scent of coffee downstairs to find Patrick in the kitchen, looking cute as hell in his plaid pyjama bottoms and grey henley. One good morning kiss later, David had his hands curled around a cup of coffee and a muffin on the plate in front of him.

“When’s it supposed to start?”

Patrick opened his phone and tapped it a few times. “Environment Canada says about noon. Michigan’s already buried.” David craned his neck to see and Patrick flipped his phone around, showing him the pictures of Detroit.

“Oh my God,” David gasped. “So much snow.”

Patrick hummed in agreement. “And it’s still going. They’re saying it’ll probably snow for about twenty-five or thirty hours.”

David clutched his mug to his chest, sitting back in his chair. “That’s a really long time.” 

“Hence the predicted snowfall amounts being so high. It’s just going to sit over top of us and hang out for a while. Plus we’re getting a double lake effect from Michigan _and_ Huron.”

David looked out through the window, where it was still and clear. He felt his shoulders tensing, climbing up to his ears, and tried to breathe them back down. “I’m nervous, Patrick.” It felt awkward to say, too blunt, but he went with it anyway.

Patrick put down his coffee to lean over and kiss David’s cheek. “Thank you for telling me.” He rubbed his fingers along David’s where they were holding his mug, and David turned one hand out to twine together with Patrick’s. “I guess I am a little, too.”

“Strangely, that actually makes me feel better.” Maybe there was something to this whole direct communication thing.

Patrick smiled softly at him. “Is there anything else we can do to make you feel less nervous?”

David thought about that. He thought about the amount of prep they’d done, and how well-informed Patrick was about the predicted storm outcomes. “No,” he said eventually. “I don’t think so. I just wanted you to know.”

Patrick brought his hand up and kissed it. “We’ll get through this, David. I promise.”

* * *

When the whole thing started, it was incredibly picturesque. Around midday, David looked up from where he was unplugging the freshly charged battery packs and froze, staring at the snow tumbling outside the window. He went to lean on the window frame, watching it twirl and twist as it fell from the sky in a million billion tiny flakes. Patrick came into the room, a water jug in each hand, and David waved him over, tucking him under his arm and tilting their heads together as they watched the clouds move in.

The wind picked up over the next few hours, whipping the snow into a frenzy as it fell heavier and heavier, blocking out the sun and throwing the house into twilight well before nightfall. David knew he was worrying Patrick, standing at various windows and staring out at the storm for hours like a particularly egregious Brontean protagonist, but he couldn’t help but find it both fascinating and terrifying. There was something happening outside that could – and likely would – completely interfere with his normal life for the next few days and there was literally nothing he could do about it beyond brace for impact. David could admit that he liked control; he lived much of his life with a strict sense of order and his worst anxiety came about when that order was disturbed, so the idea of just having to sit on his hands and wait for the inevitable chaos to upend his neat existence was something he was spending some time exploring. Besides, some deliberate and distracting introspection made it less likely he’d obsessively refresh the weather forecast page with anxious, twitchy fingers.

He made sure to assuage Patrick’s obvious worry on occasion, though, wandering into whatever space he occupied and being gently obnoxious at him until he got a few exasperated smiles and a solid ribbing in return. David could almost see the weight of concern lifting from Patrick’s shoulders whenever they got into a good rhythm, tossing quips back and forth until one of them gave in to the need for physical contact and moved into a hug.

It was early evening when Patrick coaxed him away from the windows with a mug of tea and a quiet request to come read on the couch with him. Completely unable and unwilling to deny either himself or his husband such a simple pleasure, David trailed behind Patrick and curled up beside him.

David got through three chapters before the lights flickered. He looked up, meeting Patrick’s gaze. They flickered a second time. Patrick’s smile widened. They flickered a third time and, with a sense of finality, stayed out. All the little noises the house usually produced – the purr of the fridge, the rumble of the furnace, the electronic hum of the entertainment system in stand-by – all cut out at the same time, leaving a bizarre sort of silence interrupted only by the raging wind outside.

“Here we go,” Patrick whispered. David leaned into him a little harder and Patrick kissed his temple. 

“Did we remember everything?” David’s mind was racing, thinking of all the now unusable electrical things that featured in his everyday life. Hairdryer, coffee maker, phone charger, lights, fridge, furnace, _water pump_... A panicky thread of energy settled under his skin, coalescing into a heavy iron ball settled under his sternum, cold and stifling.

“Yes,” Patrick responded confidently, snuggling into David’s side and effectively cutting off his runaway train of thought. “And even if we didn’t, we’ll be fine.”

David took a couple deep breaths, counting them out, and nodded. “Okay.” The ball shrunk, the thread of energy dissipated.

They were going to be okay.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Personally, I’m a huge fan of the ramp up to a storm, the slow build of weather that eventually tips over into something substantial. That said, this is by _far_ the shortest chapter. *shrug* Them’s the breaks.


	3. Day One

David snapped awake, confused and disoriented. The light was coming from the wrong direction, the bed felt weird, and his nose was cold. A minute of blinking away the fog of sleep gave him enough brain space to remember: the storm. Scrubbing a hand roughly over his face, he felt Patrick shift against him and turn out of little spoon so they were facing each other.

“G’morning,” he mumbled, nuzzling into David’s chest. “Sleep okay?”

David shrugged. They were curled up on the futon mattress they’d pulled from the spare room, sleeping on the living room floor to be near the fireplace – comfortable enough, especially with the number of blankets piled on top of them, but weird. “I think so. You?”

Patrick nodded, opening his eyes to blink slowly at David. “Yeah, good. What time is it?”

“Uh.” David fumbled for his phone where it was tucked under his pillow. “Eight thirty. Alexis texted already, the madwoman.”

“That’s later than I thought it was,” Patrick said, rubbing at his eyes. “Why’s it so dark in here? Should be brighter at eight thirty.”

David squinted at the windows, which were definitely not letting in as much light as they normally did. “There’s somethi—" He gasped. “Oh my God, Patrick.”

“What?” Patrick jerked his head up, looking at the windows over his shoulder.

“Oh my God. The snow is covering the windows.” David heard his awestruck horror coming through in his voice.

Patrick sat up, wide-eyed and staring at the windows. “Oh shit…”

“That,” David enunciated, slowly rising to a sit to match Patrick, “is a lot of snow. Holy fuck.”

“It might just be drift,” Patrick said faintly, but his tone didn’t convey much hope. David flopped back onto the mattress with a groan, covering his eyes dramatically with an arm. Only the top few inches of the windows were snow free, which meant that there was at least six feet of snow on the ground. Ugh. He took a couple pre-emptively calming breaths, carefully steering himself away from the iron ball threatening to reappear in his chest.

Patrick sighed and lay back down, wiggling as though he thought he could get closer to David. “I don’t want to deal with thinking about that yet,” he said as David wrapped his arms around him. “Too comfy.”

David _mmmm_ 'ed in agreement, stroking his hands up and down Patrick’s broad back as he pressed a kiss to his frowning mouth. Patrick responded gently and David sunk into the quiet, diverting intimacy of kissing his husband in the safety of their (slightly transposed) bed. They stayed like that for a long couple of minutes, smoothly passing kisses back and forth as they stroked hands over torsos, before David took the kisses a little deeper, a little rougher, introducing his teeth to Patrick’s lower lip.

He felt when Patrick cottoned on to his intent, noted the slight shift in the energy between them. Patrick went with it for a few moments, his hands going firmer on David where they gripped his side and back, but he eventually pulled away, licking his lips. “David, we do actually need to get up. Need to check the house out…”

“Or,” David responded, nudging at Patrick’s nose with his own, “or, we could get up in about twenty minutes.” He nipped at Patrick’s bottom lip, the ridge of his jaw, the tendon in his neck. “Maybe thirty.”

Patrick’s breathing was speeding up and David smiled against his neck, licking his pulse point firmly.

“Okay,” Patrick conceded, swallowing harshly and working his hands under the hem of David’s sweatshirt to rub at his lower back. “Thirty minutes.”

David rumbled happily deep in his chest and slid his hands up Patrick’s firm torso, drawing his shirt along with them and pushing the hem up past his nipples. He coaxed Patrick onto his back and leaned over him, slotting their legs together, and Patrick immediately writhed against David’s weight.

David ground down against Patrick’s hipbone, drawing a quiet groan out of him. They pressed against each other in a slowly increasing rhythm, rocking back and forth as their hands mutually explored the well-mapped territory of their bodies. David managed to peel Patrick’s shirt off and latch his mouth onto his sternum, the resulting groan sending shivers down David’s spine that had nothing to do with the cool air sneaking under the blankets.

“Fuck, David,” Patrick whispered, raspy with sleep and desire. “Keep doing that.”

David obliged, migrating over to Patrick’s nipple and scraping his teeth over it, delighting in Patrick’s electric response.

“Just remember that we don’t have a functioning shower at the moment,” Patrick gritted out, his hips jerking against David’s. “Or hot water. Or even running water, for that matter.”

David paused in his ministrations and peered up at Patrick, the beautiful flush on his face just visible in the dim light. He did have a point – most of their regular sexual activities ended with one or both of them needing at least a quick mop up. However, David was resourceful when necessary, and this was _definitely_ necessary.

“Lucky you, then,” he purred, and started kissing and nipping his way down Patrick’s chest, his hands running along the length of his torso to his hips. “That just means that I’m going to have to swallow.”

He ducked under the blankets as Patrick moaned.

* * *

“Can you get the fire going again? I want coffee.”

When Patrick gave him a one-eyed look, David turned his puppy eyes on full. “I’ll make you a tea, too.”

“I feel that should be a given.”

“Well, yes,” David agreed, “but I just wanted to make sure you knew that.”

Patrick made a suspicious noise but leaned in for a kiss anyway, which David happily returned.

“I guess I could get the fire going again, yes. We should take a peek outside sometime soon, too – check out the damage.” Patrick stretched, all the muscles of his chest going taut under David’s cheek. “Okay, you have to let me up if you want coffee.”

David sighed heavily – an impossible choice, deciding between coffee and Patrick cuddles. But he did need to pee, so getting up won out. Extracting his limbs from where they were entwined with his husband’s, David dragged his recently discarded pyjamas back onto his body and tugged his uggs onto his feet.

Peeing was cold affair, but washing his face was almost unbearable. Nine step skin care routine be damned, David knocked the process down to face wash and moisturiser – a nigh on indefensible reduction forgiven only by the fact that a) he was washing with water poured from a bucket, and b) he could see his breath while _standing inside his house_ , which was simply unacceptable. His attempt at salvaging his hair as quickly as possible was cut short by a shout from downstairs.

David made it halfway down the stairs before he realised that Patrick’s shout had morphed into laughter, and he slowed his steps to match the change in tone. Turning the corner to the front hall, David found Patrick bent in two, hands on his knees as he laughed himself silly. Beside him was the front door, opened to a solid wall of snow that ran almost the entire height of the frame. David gaped.

“Oh my _God_.”

Patrick snorted, wiping tears away from his face. “It looks like the door,” he managed, giggling. David saw what he meant – the snow was so tightly packed that it held an impression of the outside of their front door. Minus, of course, the top foot or so where the sunlight was shining though into the house.

“What the _fuck_ , Patrick.” David walked closer and put his hand to the snow blocking their outside access, his skin burning at the intense cold. “I guess we’re just… never going outside again? Oh my God.” The ball of iron was back, lodged in the centre of his chest, and David fought to breathe around it. But Patrick’s unending amusement, light and expansive, shriveled it to something manageable.

In the end, they figured the easiest way to get outside was from the spare bedroom’s window, which opened onto the kitchen’s roof and was therefore only a few feet above the snowline. David helped a bundled-up Patrick climb out the window, snowshoes and all, and elicited a promise from him to shout if he needed any help. David watched Patrick navigate the roof and carefully drop off the edge before he headed back downstairs.

He puttered around in the living room, adding a log to the reignited fire and putting water on to boil for the French press and Patrick’s tea before tidying up their bed. Flicking his mobile data on, he sent the photo of Patrick grinning in front of the snow-filled front door to their respective family group chats, then responded to Alexis’ text separately with a teasing admonishment for the early hour and a promise that they were alive and well. He sent a check-in text to Stevie and was scrolling through Instagram when he heard a scraping sound. Looking up, he saw Patrick’s red-cheeked face peering in through the gap at the top of the window.

Patrick waved and David made a kissy face at him, laughing when Patrick returned the gesture. It was still snowing out, a steady fall of flakes building up on Patrick’s toque as he started digging at the snow covering the window. The living room got brighter and brighter, with Patrick managing to clear about a foot and half more glass on each window before army crawling on his belly to the next. He waved at David again when he finished the last window, then disappeared around the corner of the house.

Hands on hips, David took in the living room. It was... serviceable for their current needs. Minimally acceptable. Mostly functional. But David had never operated on functionality as his driving force and didn’t plan on starting any time soon. He poured himself a cup of coffee, drank it more quickly than he would have liked, and then set about rearranging the furniture to something both pleasing and practical that accommodated the mattress and their new need for fireplace access.

Darting back into the cold upstairs, David collected his travel toiletries bag and some clothing from their bedroom, taking special care to select Patrick’s coziest items to bring back down. Peering out the bedroom window, he spotted Patrick heading for the shed, shuffling along in his snowshoes and looking like a character from a cheesy northwestern period drama. David knew he had a goofy smile on his face – he could feel it pulling at his cheeks, crinkling his eyes – but he couldn’t care less.

About ninety minutes after Patrick first ventured outside, David heard him shouting his name and went upstairs to meet him at the spare bedroom window again. He helped haul him up and through and they landed in a heap on the floor, which David would have been a lot more upset about if he were wearing real clothes instead of his pyjamas. As it was, Patrick was liberally covered in snow and _very cold_ , so David righted them with a minimal amount of squawking and helped Patrick peel off his snow gear.

They headed back downstairs with only a little bit of dripping, David beelining for the clothes racks he’d set up near the fire and Patrick stopping at the doorway to look around the revamped room. 

David turned to Patrick, flustered by the slightly awed look on his face. “What?” Whoops, too defensive. He winced and looked down at his hands as he hung Patrick’s wet outer things on the racks.

“I’m just constantly impressed by your ability to organise space, David. That’s all.” Patrick gave David an earnest look that he wasn’t really sure what to do with, so he just nodded awkwardly, eyes skittering away from Patrick’s face.

“Out of these,” he said, plucking at Patrick’s shirt and jeans, both damp around the edges from where snow had gotten past the outerwear. “And then into these.” He tapped the stack of clothes he brought from upstairs.

Patrick looked surprised, glancing down at himself and his wet cuffs and knees. “I don’t think I need to change, I can just dry by the fi-”

“Nope, no arguments,” David interrupted, grabbing the hem of Patrick’s sweatshirt and tugging it up and over. Patrick, a half beat behind, raised his arms in baffled compliance. “Cold, damp clothing is literally the worst thing and we do not need you getting sick when there’s a hundred feet of snow outside and we have a _fire_ for heat.” David made quick work of Patrick’s undershirt and moved on to the fly of his jeans.

“Okay, okay,” Patrick yielded, hands dropping to the waistband of his jeans. “If you insist.”

“I do.” David gave Patrick a once over, trailing a hand up his ribs and smirking at the blush that flooded over his cheeks before picking up the fresh clothes and handing the sweatpants to Patrick.

Patrick blinked, fondling the almost hot fabric of his favourite lazy pants. “Did you bring these down here to warm up by the fire?” he asked as he pulled them on. David brushed the question off flippantly, holding out a waffle fabric henley for Patrick to take next. When he didn’t, instead choosing to stand there half-naked and give David an expectant look, David huffed an embarrassed breath.

“Yes, of course,” he snapped, shaking the shirt. “Cold clothes are terrible.”

Patrick took the shirt and held it to his face before sliding it on. “Thank you, David.” He pressed a kiss to David’s cheek which David couldn’t help but lean into, thoroughly mollified.

A hoodie and some wool socks completed Patrick’s costume change, and he settled down on the couch with a yawn as David hung his discarded clothing up to dry.

“I need a nap.” Patrick hung his head to his chest, eyes closed. “Snowshoeing is hard.”

“Okay, you haven’t even eaten yet. And it’s only quarter to eleven.” David tilted Patrick’s chin up into a kiss. “Food, tea, then a nap.”

Patrick’s stomach rumbled in response.

“I’ll take that as enthusiastic agreement, shall I?” David said with a laugh that Patrick matched. “How about I attempt eggs? I make zero guarantees on the quality – cooking on an open fire is not something I’ve yet had the highly dubious privilege of experiencing – but hot food is hot food.”

“I’d love eggs if you feel up to it.”

“I guess we’ll find out.”

David dipped into the kitchen and grabbed the eggs, butter, and bread from the dark fridge and the cast iron skillet from the stove. Then, after setting the skillet down on the camping grill over the fire, David sat on the couch beside Patrick and looked at him expectantly.

“So?” he asked.

Patrick blinked. “So what?”

“What’s the situation outside? I’ve been puttering away in here like an eighteenth-century housewife while my dashing pioneer husband has been out in the frozen wilderness, getting frostbite and chapped lips. I’m not complaining,” David quickly added, rubbing Patrick’s shoulders in response to his bemused look. “Honestly, it’s a whole motif and I am very behind it right now. The fire helps sell it.” He gestured vaguely at the hearth, where the skillet was heating up nicely.

Patrick chuckled, leaning into David’s hands, and David got back to the point.

“I’m just saying that you went out to get the lay of the land and I’m hoping you’ll share what you’ve gleaned.”

“Well, there’s a lot of snow.”

David pinned him with a look. “You don’t say?”

Patrick grinned. “It’s definitely drifted in some spots – it almost covered the shed roof on the far side. But it’s mostly just straight fall. I’d guess we got maybe five feet? Still snowing, too.” He glanced outside, where the snow was visibly coming down.

“Five fucking feet of snow, Patrick.” Ridiculous. Unacceptable. _Incorrect_.

“Well, they were predicting more than a metre and a half, so that fits.” David just shook his head and went to inspect the skillet, cracking some eggs into it when he deemed it hot enough. “Doesn’t seem to be any damage to the house, though,” Patrick continued. “Not that I could see. And I assume the car’s still in the driveway where we left it – it’s very possible that I walked over it, actually.”

David groaned. “Patrick, I’ve inherited my father’s bad back. I can’t shovel this much snow.”

“Your father’s bad back is as bogus as your mother’s accent.” At David’s indignant look, Patrick laughed. “Remember that time you literally carried me up a mountain?”

David pursed his lips, attempting to keep up his façade of resentment despite the memory of their engagement hike threatening to turn up the corners of his mouth. Poking the eggs with his spatula, he diplomatically changed topics. “Do you want some tea now?”

“Yes, please.” David could hear the smile in Patrick’s voice and couldn’t help but match it.

The eggs turned out decently, though the toast was a little smokier than he would have preferred, and they ate it all quickly. Once the plates were empty and Patrick had reupped on tea, David cracked open his travel toiletries kit and appropriated Patrick’s hands, ignoring the quiet whine when he removed the almost empty mug from Patrick’s grasp and placed it on the coffee table. Humming, David worked his best lotion into Patrick’s dry hands, tutting quietly when Patrick flinched at an accidental tickle and firming his touch. Switching products, David tilted Patrick’s gently smiling face toward him and started smoothing moisturiser over his pink cheeks, interrupting his own ministrations a few times to kiss those irresistible lips. Patrick held perfectly still, his eyes closed as he leaned slightly into David’s hands and returned the kisses with the same soft affection they were offered.

“Lip balm?” Patrick generally wasn’t a fan, so David always made sure to ask first.

“Sure. Not the mint stuff, though.” David dug around in his bag for the orange blossom one, his personal favourite, and applied it in a few easy swipes to first Patrick, then himself. He sealed the deal with another kiss, which Patrick briefly licked into, and pulled away to pack up his kit.

“Mm, thank you, David.”

“You’re welcome, Patrick.”

“My skin thanks you, too.”

“As it should.”

* * *

The next few hours passed slowly in a haze of warm air and shared blankets and periodic fire feedings, reaching a level of domestic lassitude that put all those ridiculous hygge books to shame. By unspoken agreement they decided to pretend the outside didn’t exist, secure in the knowledge that there was no imminent danger to the house and that they could just relax in their little oasis until the storm was finally over and settled.

David changed out of his pyjamas and into his warmest, coziest clothing, fully aware that there wasn’t much difference between the two outfits and not caring half a whit, especially when Patrick settled in against his side and rubbed his cheek against the lambswool with clear appreciation. David kissed the top of his head and opened his book, ready to blast through the last few chapters.

Patrick kept giggling – which was literally the cutest sound on the planet and David wished he could bottle it and keep it around his neck like a slightly less creepy version of early-aughties Angelina – and poking him in the arm to show him stupid memes and Twitter posts and other internet detritus, which David pretended to merely tolerate but secretly loved, no matter how much it slowed down his reading. He did eventually manage to finish the book though, mostly because Patrick seemed to have found a longform article and had temporarily forgotten about cats in sweaters, so David pulled out his phone to respond to Stevie’s woebegone messages about the snow and check the local news.

Fuck, that was _so much snow_ – it didn’t seem like there was enough water in the world to make that much snow. CBC was reporting over a metre and a half already down in most places in western Ontario, with more to come and to be topped off with freezing rain in a few hours, which was just _wonderful_. The power station on the peninsula had taken damage from the wind that was exacerbated by the subsequent intense snowfall, leaving most of the region without electricity and with a restoration estimate numbering in the days.

Aware his brow was pinched into an unhappy line and heeding the threatening aura of the iron ball, David switched over to social media for a lighter take. Twyla had taken a good photo of the main intersection in town from her apartment above the café, showing how both Bob’s Garage and the Apothecary had seemingly survived the snow – one less thing to worry about in the immediate sense, then. Ray had shared a surprisingly hilarious photo someone outside had taken of him standing in front of his back door, just the wispy top of his head visible over the height of the snow. David nudged Patrick and tilted the phone for him to see, and Patrick laughed until his cheeks went pink and David was simply forced to kiss them again.

The Rose group chat pinged a few times as his father exclaimed over the photo of their front door, immediately followed by an attempt at emojis. David considered them – surprisingly not atrocious. He was learning. Then Alexis responded by sending a selfie that was clearly taken on her walk to work, looking very chilly chic in a mauve beret and grey peacoat lightly dusted with snow. David, not to be outdone on the winter aesthetic scale, quickly snapped a photo of his and Patrick’s feet propped on the coffee table with the fire in the background and sent it to the chat. Alexis responded instantly with a heart eyes emoji and a long _awwwwwwww_ that took up two full lines. Then his father sent a picture from what looked like the view from their balcony in California, all sun and palm trees and mild seventeen degrees, and David promptly closed the chat without responding. Rude.

Suddenly wanting to feel warmer than he was, David stood and added another couple of logs to the fire (very carefully – his poor clothes did not deserve this treatment, ugh) and spent a few minutes watching it, hands outstretched to catch the hot air. As much as he tried to avoid comparing his life to how it used to be, pre-Schitt’s-Creek, sometimes the contrast was just too substantial to not at least consider it. The David of ten years ago would have absolutely lost his mind over a situation like this; no power, no access to the outside world, _cooking_ over a _fire_ while _inside_. Shit, the David of _two_ years ago wouldn’t have dealt with this particularly well. But here he was, a happily married homeowner hunkered down in rural Canada and only freaking out a teeny bit about the whole indoor camping thing they had going on. Past-David would never have recognised him. Glancing at Patrick where he was sprawled out and absently chewing on one of his hoodie strings while tapping away on his phone, David smiled. Past-David wouldn’t have understood what a good thing was if it bit him on the ass.

Or on his clothing. _Really_ , Patrick?

Rubbing his hands together, David made his way back to the couch and dropped down beside Patrick, tugging the hoodie string out of his unresisting mouth with a disgruntled noise. Patrick grinned at him, kissed his cheek, and made to put the hoodie string back in his mouth, laughing when David swatted at his hand.

“If you’re hungry, there are better things to eat than your shirt.”

“But low-grade poly-cotton blends taste so good, David.”

“Your standards are atrocious.” Patrick shrugged, because David was right and they both knew it. Then, with a jaw-cracking yawn, Patrick rolled off the couch, pressed a kiss to David’s temple, and tucked himself into their makeshift bed.

“Patrick, it’s two in the afternoon.”

“Sleep when you’re tired, David,” was the response, already muffled by the blankets and pillow encompassing Patrick’s head. “Just a nap – I’ll be up in half an hour.”

Setting a mental timer to remember to poke Patrick awake if he slept longer than that – no sense in totally destroying their sleep cycles – David yielded and, after plugging both their phones into the battery pack, started a new book.

However, it wasn’t very long before he felt himself nodding off, the dry heat from the fire sapping his energy just as successfully as it was sapping all the moisture from his skin. His thoughts wandered further and further from the book, turning into dozy half-dreams about snow-covered palm trees and Patrick in a voyageur hat running away from a burnt piece of toast. His own laughter startled him fully awake and he rubbed at his drowsy eyes, stifling a yawn with the back of his hand. There had to be something biological to explain this, this ridiculous level of sleepiness that came with a fire in the winter. Some part of his lizard brain must flick on at the sight of flames and completely take over, resisting all thought of _doing_ anything when it was so inhospitable outside. David scrubbed a hand over his face, though, and forced his human brain back into control, turning his attention back to his book.

When the clock on the mantle told him that Patrick had been asleep for about forty minutes, David stretched out a foot and gently nudged his blanket-covered rump. “Patrick. Patrick, wake up.” When Patrick just grunted and wriggled deeper into the blankets, David smiled fondly and nudged him again, but less gently. “Patrick.”

“Five more minutes,” came the sleepy mumble.

“No, now. C’mon, wakey wakey.” David planted his foot against Patrick’s hip and started rocking him back and forth, laughing when Patrick grunted in disgust and rolled over to the other side of the bed to escape. Then the blankets shifted as Patrick eased into a full body stretch, his hands reaching over his head and shaking slightly with the force of it.

“Good nap?”

Patrick hummed in response, yawning as he turned onto his side and blinked at David. “Yeah, good.”

“Good.” David gave him a long, warm look, enjoying the relatively rare sight of a dopey Patrick – their mismatched natural wake-up times tended to favour a dopey David – before turning back to his book. He got through another page or so before he felt Patrick’s gaze on him and he looked up, an eyebrow raised. “Yes?”

“Come cuddle?” Patrick asked, pinning David with a sly look. 

David smirked, a frisson of thrill shooting up his spine at the glint in Patrick’s eyes. Putting the book aside, he sashayed the few steps over to the mattress, dropping to his knees to crawl up Patrick’s reclining form and straddle his hips over the blankets. “Cuddle? Is that what we’re calling it?”

“Close enough,” Patrick murmured and pulled David in for a kiss.

* * *

Standing buck nude in front of an open fire while heating water for a post-coital wash, David felt much less like an eighteenth-century housewife and much more like a character in a medieval fantasy novel or something, all rugged and hardy. It was very bracing. His squeal when he accidentally touched the hot edge of the pot only dampened that feeling a smidge, so he still considered it a win. A splash of cold water added to the pot brought its contents to a more comfortable temperature, and he quickly wiped his chest and stomach down before bringing the gently steaming cloth to the bundle of blankets that still housed his husband.

“Up, up, you’re messy.”

Patrick glowered at him from a gap in his mountain of down and wool. “And whose fault is that?”

“Yours just as much as mine, dear. Now open sesame before I’m forced to demonstrate my hard-earned oyster shucking skills and pry you out myself.”

Sleepy, warm, and clearly reluctant, Patrick slowly opened the blankets and let David run the warm cloth over his front, crotch, and ass. David regretted the rather slapdash nature of the cleaning but, unfortunately, needs must. Tossing the cloth back into the pot, he hustled back into the blankets, snuggling himself up against Patrick’s toasty self.

It was only late afternoon, far too early to be burrowing into bed with half a mind to sleep, but doing almost nothing all day was surprisingly exhausting when one did it in the cold and while camping in one’s own home. David sighed, digging his brow into Patrick’s breastbone. 

He was in a state of stupor, not asleep but not really awake either, when he heard an irregular _tock-tock-tock_ sound start up at the windows. “Is that freezing rain?”

“Mm-hmm.”

David huffed, refusing to open his eyes. “This storm just isn’t giving up.”

“Should be done in a few hours. The freezing rain will probably keep the hydro out even longer, though,” Patrick murmured, kissing the top of David’s head.

“Ugh. Why don’t humans hibernate? I want to wake up when it’s warm again.”

“It’s like four o’clock and we’re both almost asleep – we’re already hibernating.”

“Unless I get to be unconscious until May, it doesn’t count.”

“Okay, David,” Patrick said as he wiggled further into the blankets, and David knew he was being placated but was too sleepy to care. Maybe he’d care tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warmth cuddles and adult cuddles and mutual caretaking, hurrah.
> 
>   1. I have experienced so many ( _so many_ ) winter power outages, I can’t even explain how many. Including several multi-day ones in rural environments with wood stoves for heat. This is… cathartic, haha. Raise your hand if you’ve ever climbed out a second-storey window onto a snowbank ✋ ✋ ✋
>   2. Sex where all bits need to stay under several layers of blankets is difficult and I salute those who attempt it.
>   3. Yes, the switching back and forth between metric and imperial measurements for snow depth is completely on purpose. Welcome to Canada, where there’s a [bizarre mix of measurement standards](https://preview.redd.it/k1brffgbngk31.png?width=681&format=png&auto=webp&s=8cc428c345b687a3f79d8e481561781f38d0630e) and the conversions are universally memorized.
>   4. ~~Despite my fics, I'm rather out of the fandom loop. I don’t really do tumblr much anymore but are there any SC Discords kicking around that are accepting new members? Let me know~ (my email is in my profile if you don’t want to comment publicly)~~ Bless y'all.
> 



	4. Day Two

David was dozing in bed the next morning when Patrick said, “I think we should dig out the furnace vent,” which was a confusing sentence at the best of times, let alone when still half asleep.

“What?”

Patrick, crouched in front of the fireplace and wheedling the banked embers back into flame, turned to look at David. “The external furnace vent. It’s behind the hydrangeas. If the hydro comes back on and the vent’s blocked, the furnace won’t turn on.”

“That’s... a thing?”

“It’s a failsafe. Prevents carbon monoxide poisoning.”

“Jesus. Our house is trying to kill us.” Hello, iron ball, welcome back.

“Mm, I think I’ve seen that movie.” David glared at Patrick over the edge of the blankets. Patrick just smiled in return and leaned over to give David a good morning kiss, which softened David’s expression significantly. “Anyway, it’s the exact opposite of that. The failsafe is the house trying to save us.”

“If not carbon monoxide, then hypothermia.”

“Ideally, we’ll be able to avoid both,” Patrick concluded, slapping his hands to his thighs as he stood. “Just need to dig out the vent. Want to join me?”

David did not.

Thankfully, it turned out he couldn’t. While the freezing rain had added a good layer of ice to the top of the snow, it wasn’t quite thick enough to hold Patrick’s weight when he tested it, his leg crashing through the snow to his mid-thigh. And if it couldn’t hold Patrick, it definitely wasn’t going to hold David. Given they only had the one pair of snowshoes – which David had no experience using – it was no surprise to either of them that it was Patrick who ended up shuffling around the house to find the hydrangeas and the vent behind them while David closed the window and retreated back downstairs.

David had only let about half of his relief show when Patrick had looked up at him from the surface of the snow, which was probably still a little too much, but hey, he had his reasons. Beyond the general distaste for going outside in such a hellscape, he was also not at _all_ confident in his ability to pull himself back in through the window and that was just a scene that literally no one needed to deal with, Patrick included. Patrick especially, honestly.

So David returned to his Realm of Warmth and Comfort and went about making sure it stayed that way, making their bed and poking the fire and setting water to boil for hot drinks. He put some muffins and a pair of bananas near the fire to warm through, having been retrieved from the thoroughly cold kitchen, and almost jumped out of his skin at the loud scraping sound that started up in the next room until he realised that it was Patrick, digging at the snow against the side of the house.

When the scraping stopped, David headed back upstairs to the guest room and waited for Patrick to appear. He did, puffing slightly and carrying his shovel over his shoulder like a giant plastic bindle, and looked delighted to see David already at the window. David helped him back in through the window – which really mostly amounted to wrangling the snowshoes and shovel – and repeated the whole routine from yesterday: out of the cold and wet clothes, into a fire-warmed sweat suit, plied with a cup of hot tea and warmed food, and thoroughly moisturised with David’s nicest products.

“Y’know, this whole song and dance might actually be kinda nice if it weren’t a necessity,” David said, rubbing the last bit of lotion into Patrick’s forehead. “Like, people would voluntarily pay money to temporarily live in a single room with a fireplace, my skin products, and no interruptions.”

Patrick smiled in response, his eyes still closed under David’s ministrations. “I think that’s true of a lot of things. Camping’s fun, but survival situations in the woods aren’t. Skydiving is fun, but jumping from a crashing plane isn’t.”

David shuddered and tapped Patrick on the nose. “We have _very_ different definitions of fun, honey.”

“True.” Patrick opened his eyes, whiskey warm and lazy, and David couldn’t help but smile. “I promise I’ll never take you skydiving, especially without prior warning.”

Oh God, _imagine_. “I’d like that in writing, please.”

“How about I just seal it with a kiss instead?” And he did.

* * *

"That," David declared, walking into the living room and tossing his towel at the drying rack, "was deeply unpleasant."

Patrick looked up from his book, a small smile in place. “Have fun?”

“Why do we live somewhere where blizzards happen? We could be living somewhere warm, where snow only shows up in acid trips and fever dreams.” David straightened out his towel on the rack with sharp, jerky movements. “But no, we have to live in Canada, where it snows three hundred days a year and the power doesn’t stay on.”

“David, sponge baths aren't that bad.”

“They are when the air is minus eighty degrees!” Approximately.

“At least you had hot water,” Patrick said, nodding at the empty pot still clutched in David's hand.

David looked at the pot in disgust. “Small mercies.”

Patrick visibly bit his lip and turned back to his book as David flopped dramatically on the bed, stretching out to secure maximum heat absorption from the fire. Winter was the worst invention, David decided, but fires were okay. They could stay.

Just when David was gathering the resolve to pull his face out of his pillow and find his toiletries bag to do what he could of his skin care routine, the mattress shifted slightly and the very warm figure of his husband pressed along his side. He opened his eyes to Patrick’s smiling face and the light tap of his toiletries bag against the crown of his head.

“Figured you’d want this,” Patrick said, leaning in for a kiss which David happily accepted and returned.

“Mm, thank you.” David rubbed the tip of his nose against Patrick’s. “And thanks for bringing my stuff over, too.”

Patrick huffed out a little laugh and David couldn’t help the smile that crept over his face as he shifted to be lying on his side, facing Patrick more fully. Spending any length of time silently gazing into another person’s eyes was something he’d previously thought only happened in cheesy romance novels and the borderline acceptable romcoms, but here he was, lost in his husband’s eyes and not even a little bit embarrassed by it. What a trip.

But then Patrick inadvertently broke the spell when he reached up to run his fingers through David’s hair, a rare treat – for both of them – that David usually allowed when there was no one around and no one planned to be around before he could get to a mirror and a comb. Usually.

However, this time wasn’t usual and David flinched away, pulling his head away from Patrick’s questing fingers with a grimace. “Ew, no, it’s so greasy, please don’t.” A sponge bath was one thing, but a hair wash in these circumstances was entirely another.

Patrick blinked. “It’s only been two days!”

“Yes, Patrick, some people have hair that actually needs regular maintenance.”

“Sounds exhausting.”

David knew he was looking at Patrick’s hair with a slightly wistful expression but he couldn’t help himself. “If you’d just grow it out another inch—”

“No, David. I like my hair low maintenance.”

“But _curls_.”

“Precisely my point, yes.”

David huffed in disgust and flopped flat on the mattress again, but Patrick followed, clinging to David’s chest and resting his head on his shoulder. “You’d hate it if I started hogging the bathroom in the morning anyway.”

“I might not if it’s the price to pay for you with curls.”

Patrick just hummed and dug his nose into the soft cashmere of David’s cable knit sweater, and David didn’t have the heart to tell him to be gentle.

* * *

Patrick was puttering around their living space, tidying up the detritus that came from existing in such a slapdash manner – kitchen adjacent things in the far corner, clothing in the clothing pile, freshly fetched firewood stacked in the sling, etc. He was humming and bopping his hips to the music coming out of his phone, which was stashed in a mug on the coffee table for amplification, when he turned to look at David, face thoughtful.

“Do you know how to actually dance?”

David looked up from his book, an eyebrow raised. “Define ‘actually dance’ for me.”

Patrick waved a hand in a circle. “Y’know, like waltzes and foxtrots and stuff. Formal dancing.”

“Ah.” David nodded in both understanding and answer. “Yeah, Alexis and I both took lessons for a few years.” Unfortunately. David imagined that trying to teach _any_ moody teen to dance was difficult, let alone sensitive and spoiled ones who were used to getting everything their own way. It was a miracle Tonio hadn’t quit before he did, honestly.

“Think you could teach me something?” 

David hummed. “Possibly? There might be enough memories still rattling around in here somewhere.” Then he thought of something and paused, surprised it had never come up before. When Patrick tilted his head at him in question, David shook his head, furrowing his brow. “I just realised that I only know how to lead – that’s all they taught me.” He gestured broadly. “Because I would only be dancing with women. Obviously.”

“Not exactly very open-minded of them.” Patrick tapped his phone and the music cut off.

“Well, that’s heteronormativity for you,” David said faux-brightly, biting down on the rant bubbling up in his throat. Patrick looked like he understood what David wanted to say, a little pinched around the nose, which helped him force the words down again. He stood from the couch and moved to a relatively open part of the room, beckoning to Patrick as he held up his hands in a dancing frame. “Let’s start with me leading, then we’ll figure it out the other way around too. It’s not much different for the waltz, actually.”

Patrick stepped into his arms, hovering his hands and clearly trying to remember where to put them on this side of things. David nodded at his right bicep as he curled his hand around Patrick’s ribcage to rest beneath his shoulder blades, then wiggled the fingers on his left hand in invitation, and Patrick set himself up accordingly.

“Okay, so, first things first: the best way to not step on anyone’s feet is to stay in your lane.” At Patrick’s quizzical look, David elaborated. “The basic waltz move is essentially a box shape – four straight sides – so when I step backward,” and he did with his left foot, tugging Patrick along slightly so he had to step forward with his right foot to catch his balance, “Exactly, you step like that. But if you follow me exactly, you could step on me. So you should aim your foot to go just to the inside of mine by a couple inches – parallel, but not in-line.” David reached down to tap Patrick’s thigh, and Patrick shuffled his foot over slightly. “Yes, good. When stepping forward, the right foot goes to the inside and the left to the outside. That way if one of us oversteps, our toes are saved.” He looked up at Patrick, who rolled his eyes in amusement.

“And by toes, you mean your uggs.”

“My toes are in my uggs, so it’s functionally the same thing.”

“Mmhmm,” Patrick said suspiciously, glancing down at their feet again. “Why do I get the feeling this isn’t normally the first thing taught in a dance class?”

“I have no idea what you mean,” David said with deliberate nonchalance, and then immediately had Patrick practice staying in his lane a half dozen more times before moving on to the rest of the box step.

They fumbled along, bolstered by David’s half-remembered lessons manifesting more strongly as they danced and Patrick’s natural sense of rhythm and athletic ability, and eventually moved from the basic box step into straight lines across the room, before graduating to turns. The turns, however, is when they started falling over each other.

“It’s still a three count, so step-swing-step, step-swing-step,” David said, staring down at their feet in a way that he was sure Tonio would _tut_ at him for.

Patrick let out a sharp breath. “Okay, but how do I know which foot to step with? You switch and I can’t read your mind.”

Wiggling his fingers where they rested against Patrick’s back, David gave him a lopsided smile. “I’m telling you with my hands, or how I shift my weight. If I want us to go backwards – or forwards for you – I put pressure on your back. If I want a left turn, I’ll shift my weight to the left.” He demonstrated both actions as he said them, smiling as Patrick’s eyes went wide.

“So I have to follow the rhythm, remember the pattern, not step on you, _and_ pay attention to subtle cues for where you want us to go?” Patrick sounded faintly incredulous and maybe a little too frustrated for an impromptu and casual dancing lesson in their living room. David took his hand out from under Patrick’s and brought it in to cup against his neck, rubbing his thumb along his jawline.

“Ever watched Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance together? She did everything he did, but backwards and in heels.” He gave Patrick a significant look. “Honestly, I think leading is easier than following. You have to interpret what I want to do, whereas I just get to do it. But you’re doing fine, Patrick. There’s a reason why people take lessons – it’s not as simple as it looks.”

Patrick continued to look slightly mulish though, and the last thing David wanted to deal with right now was a perfectionist gone sour, so he took it back down a notch by containing their turns to one direction instead of two. They found their rhythm again, Patrick picking up on David’s leading cues now that he wasn’t so flustered and humming a quiet _one-two-three_ count under his breath that made David smile. Once they’d made a couple full circuits of the open space without any mishaps, David brought them to a halt and slid his arms up to dangle over Patrick’s shoulders in a more familiar dancing position, which Patrick matched with his hands around David’s waist. 

“Dancing is hard,” Patrick sighed, leaning his forehead in to rest on David’s cheek. David just smiled fondly – it took a lot for Patrick to admit something like that. “How do people who don’t know each other so well not just get tangled up constantly?”

“I honestly have no idea. I was usually paired up with Alexis, which went about as well as you think, or the instructor, which was frighteningly easy because he was so good at it.” David pressed a gentle kiss to Patrick’s thin line of a mouth. “You did really well, though. You’re a natural.”

Patrick just grunted slightly in response, clearly unhappy with his dancing chops, so David pulled him in for a hug, kissing his temple and his ear and his forehead as he went. Patrick’s shoulders slowly sank as he unwound into the embrace and David felt him kiss his neck. He was about to suggest they go back to reading on the couch when Patrick spoke.

“Can we try with music now?”

David huffed out a laugh, shaking his head in amazement. Patrick really could be such dog with a bone. “Sure, if you want. It’s harder with music, though – you can’t just change the speed in your head if you mess up.”

“Mmhm,” Patrick said, already disengaging and heading for his phone. David rolled his eyes affectionately and went over to help pick a song.

They spent several minutes searching through their downloaded music collections, looking for a three-four signature song that was both slow enough and mutually acceptable. Eventually they settled on _Come Away With Me_ by Norah Jones and Patrick put it on repeat before he dropped his phone back into the mug.

It took them a couple play-throughs of the song before they found their rhythm again, Patrick no longer stumbling when David switched from a straight step to a turn, and they relaxed into the movement. Slowly, slowly, they got closer and closer together, David’s frame crumbling away as their steps turned soft and indistinct until they were just gently swaying together in a sloppy imitation of a waltz, their heads tilted together at the temple. 

Patrick was quietly singing about half the lyrics and humming the rest, his voice overlaying beautifully with Norah’s, and David made a point of imprinting this moment to his consciousness, of tucking every sensation, every thought, into the deepest recess of his brain, and saving them for day sometime in the future when he might need to be reminded how happy he could be.

* * *

“Oh my God, it’s my dad’s birthday today.”

David startled at Patrick’s outburst, almost dropping his book. “What?”

“It’s his birthday, right? It’s the tenth?”

Ticking the days off on his fingers, David thought about it for a moment. “Yup, it is.”

“Shit, shit, shit,” Patrick chanted, lunging for his phone on the coffee table and pulling up his contacts.

“Patrick, we’re buried under a mile of snow on our second day without electricity. He’s not going to be mad that it slipped your mind.”

“I’m not worried about _mad_ , David. I’m just pissed at myself that I lost track of the days. Bad enough that we couldn’t get away to see them—”

“—Driving across the province in February is never going to be a particularly good idea, current weather situation notwithstanding—”

“—but then not even calling him until almost seven in the evening, that’s just—Hi Dad!” Patrick cut himself off, pulling the phone away from his ear and tapping on speakerphone. “Happy birthday!”

“Hey, kiddo! Thank you very much!”

“Sorry I’m calling so late,” Patrick said, jumping in headfirst. “The days are all blurring together and I almost forgot.”

“Oh, that’s okay, bud. I know what it’s like with a big storm like that. How’re you holding up? Gone snow mad yet?” Clint chuckled at his own joke, and David looked at Patrick with faint alarm. Patrick just shook his head dismissively and patted his thigh.

“Nope, holding out fine. Lots of food, entertainment, and wood for the fire, so we’ll be good for ages yet.”

“How’s David doing?”

“He’s right beside me here, so I’ll let him answer that.” Patrick tilted the phone towards him slightly, a little smile on his face, and David obligingly greeted his father-in-law.

“Happy birthday, Clint! I’m doing well. How’s the snow situation over there?”

“Thank you, David! It’s not too bad here, actually. It emptied itself out over you guys, it seems.”

“Sure feels that way,” David said with a grimace. “Did Marcy show you the photo of the snow at the door?” Clint wasn’t much of a text messages guy and David felt safe in his prediction that he hadn’t seen any of the pictures either of them had sent to the group chat.

“She did! Looks real impressive. How long did it take to dig out?”

Patrick grimaced, shooting David a regretful look. “We haven’t dug it yet, actually.”

“Patrick,” Clint said, managing to convey an astonishing amount of gentle disappointment and paternal encouragement in a single word.

Patrick rolled his eyes and David smirked, enjoying himself probably a little too much – Clint could be such a dad sometimes and David doubted he’d ever stop finding it hilarious. “Yes, I know, I know. We’ll do it tomorrow,” Patrick said, picking up the phone and turning it off speaker. “It’s a lot of snow, Dad.” David couldn’t hear Clint’s response, but he got the gist of it through Patrick’s expression.

With a kiss to Patrick’s red cheek, David leaned back and curled up in the corner of the couch, half-heartedly eavesdropping on Patrick’s half of the conversation while texting back and forth with Stevie. He was trying his best to convince her to just hotbox under her bed covers and sleep through the next few days, but she wasn’t taking the bait. He made a wager with himself (a danish from that good place in Elmdale – once he could actually get to Elmdale again, ugh) that he’d succeed in his attempts before the power came back on.

When his stomach rumbled at the thought of baked goods, David grabbed a package of cookies from the kitchen and returned to the couch, draping a throw around his and Patrick’s legs. He offered the open end of the cookie sleeve to Patrick, who took one with a smile, and proceeded to eat it in tiny bites between defending his and David’s lack of a snowblower to his father. 

“They send their love,” Patrick said eventually, discarding his phone on the arm of the couch and snuggling into David’s side. “And their extremely unnecessary yet overwhelmingly characteristic concern about our ability to survive this situation intact.”

“Are they worried about our relationship or our house?”

“Our house. No worries about our relationship.”

“Mm, good.” David leaned in for a cookie-flavoured kiss. “Glad we’re in agreement over something.”

His phone buzzed again and David mentally prepared another pro-hotbox argument to toss Stevie’s way until he saw who the text was from.

 **[Sister Person]**  
📞 _?_

David pulled his lips to the side, desperately trying to hide his smile from Patrick. His relationship with Alexis was still a little more tender than he was completely comfortable with, hard-earned on both sides after the disruption of her move to New York had unsettled them both. Patrick, who had assisted in their recovery efforts, could not help but gloat a little (or a lot) whenever he saw them interacting in a theoretically normal way.

Sighing, David gave it up as a lost cause – Patrick would get all smug as soon as Alexis called anyway, regardless of whether David was able to hide his reaction to her text.

**[David]**  
👍  
_call, not ft_

The phone started ringing in his hand a few seconds later and David saw Patrick’s lips quirk up in recognition of the ringtone. David squinted at him defensively, watching as Patrick schooled his face into something comparatively mild, and answered the call.

“Has it finally stopped snowing?”

David rolled his eyes. “Hello to you too, Alexis.”

“Whatever, hi – how much did you guys actually get?”

“I think the official count is one seventy-two?” He glanced at Patrick, who nodded, his stubble dragging against David’s sweater. “Yeah, one seventy-two.”

“OhmygodDavid that’s so much snow.”

David’s chest went a little tight, a little heavy. “Yes, I know, I’m surrounded by it, so can we talk about literally anything else? How’s work? Did you nail down that cereal thing?”

“Ugh, no,” and David could picture her frustrated hair flip. “They backed out – went in-house, I think. But Interflix wants to talk to me about a short-term contract to promote some hot new doc? Which could be very fun, David.”

“Mm, would we say documentaries are hot? Or fun?”

“Okay, well, if it isn’t, then it’s my job to make it seem that way. That’s literally what I get paid to do.”

“Ah, finally attaining your life goal of becoming a professional liar.”

“ _David_.”

David smirked and relaxed into the routine of conversing with his sister, tossing meaningless banter back and forth between actual updates on their lives. Patrick grew heavier and heavier against his side, his breathing going deep and slow, and David tempered his responses to Alexis in order to not wake him.

They stayed like that long after David hung up with Alexis, David with his nose buried in Patrick’s hair and steadfastly ignoring Patrick’s gentle drooling on his cashmere. That, he thought, was true love.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. David whining about wanting Patrick to grow out his hair and Patrick firmly refusing is a favourite trope of mine, and I’m very glad I finally got to use it.
>   2. Formal dancing is super het-assumptive and I am _over_ it. Learn both positions and shake it up, folks. (Also, I haven’t had a dance lesson in about a decade so please don’t expect anything I wrote to be particularly accurate...)
>   3. Shout-out to the throwback to “Nagging Feeling” and the inspiration paragraph for this fic~
> 



	5. Day Three

On their third day without power, David woke up to the ping of his phone.

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_ok so my window just broke??_  
_like split right down the middle_  
_chunks of glass on the floor, wind coming in_

“What the fuck,” David whispered, sitting up in their little nest. Patrick grumbled at him, turning over and recoiling from the cold air that infiltrated the blankets.

**[David]**  
_?!??!?!_  
_are you ok??_

Another message notification came through almost immediately.

 **[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_ya just spooked_  
_and COLD jfc_  
_my tits are gonna freeze off_  
_i’ve been telling linda about that cracked window for months and she did nothing and now I’m going to get hypothermia_

David shook his head cynically. Stevie’s superintendent had been the source of many a rant. He typed out a sympathetic response and was asking if Linda was going to fix the situation when Patrick grunted unhappily.

“David, either lie down or leave. You’re lettin’ all the heat out,” Patrick slurred, eyes still closed as he buried his nose into his pillow.

“Sorry, sorry.” David shivered in his pyjama sweater, eyeing the banked fire in the hearth wishfully, and snuggled back down along Patrick’s curved back. “Stevie’s window broke,” he explained as he settled the comforters around them again.

“Whuh?” Patrick turned his head and opened one eye curiously. “Broke?”

“Yeah. It’s been cracked for a while, but the cold has finally defeated it.” David kissed Patrick’s neck, warming his nose on his soft skin.

Patrick flinched, bringing his shoulder up to his ear in defense. “She c’n come here ‘f she’s cold.”

David thought about that for half a short second. “Patrick, the snow is taller than she is. It’s taller than _I_ am in some places.”

“Mmm,” Patrick agreed, but then added, “Roland.”

David opened his mouth to complain about Patrick saying that name while they were in bed together, but then realised what Patrick meant. Roland, in a rare but perhaps characteristic display of community responsibility, had been using his snowmobile to bomb around town since the storm ended, making deliveries, offering help, checking up on people, and just generally being a connection to the outside world when necessary. There had been several posts on the local chatter Facebook page ( _Creek Babbles_ ) over the past couple of days that thanked him, often accompanied by a photo of him astride his ancient ski-doo and beaming through his helmet’s visor.

“Do you think he would?” David asked, glancing at his phone again as another message from Stevie came through.

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_linda just told me to put a blanket over the window_  
_you can have my clothes when i die_

“Prob’ly,” Patrick yawned, turning over and blinking at David. “Worth askin’.”

**[David]**  
_if you leave me your clothes i’m just going to burn them for warmth_  
_ask roland to bring you here? we have unbroken windows and a fireplace_

There was no response for a long minute, and David regretted the lack of read receipts. He spun the phone around and around in his grip until Patrick touched his forearm in a request to stop. 

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_seriously?_

David huffed a disgruntled noise. 

**[David]**  
_no i was joking, we’re going to let you freeze_  
_rip stevie_  
_of course seriously_  
_just bring_ 🍷 

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_ah theres the catch_

**[David]**  
_sharing our precious resources requires payment, budd_  
_let me know what roland says_

David tucked the phone under his pillow and settled back in against Patrick’s warmth. He had just reached that floaty liminal space before sleep when his phone pinged again. 

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_roland says he can pick me up in a few hours_  
_i’ll let you know when i leave_

**[David]**  
_perfect see you then_

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_any supplies in particular i could bring? other than the_ 🍷 

**[David]**  
_weed? games? food if you’ve got easy to transport stuff_  
_we have plenty of blankets and shit though so don’t worry about that_

**[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]**  
_okay cool_  
_thx btw_

**[David]**  
_ofc_

Thirty minutes of dozing and a lazy make out session later, David was pulling on his wool socks as Patrick stoked the fire back into life. “It’s a good kick in the butt to actually start clearing some of the snow, too. I doubt Stevie would be able to climb in that window – too high.” 

“Can’t we just stay in our little hibernation nest until it all melts?” David wiggled, gesturing a hand around to indicate the one-room life they’d been living. It was growing on him, especially in the face of needing to go outside. 

“As lovely as it’s been, we’ll either go stir crazy or starve before that happens.” 

“I might be willing to take that risk.” 

“David, you get upset when we run out of the good granola bars. I don’t think voluntary starvation is in your future.” 

“You’re so rude, why did I marry such a rude man?” 

“Beats me,” Patrick says blandly, standing from the now merrily blazing fire and pressing a kiss to David’s lips. “My fire skills?” 

David pretended to consider this. “That might have had something to do with it. It’s very handy, very sexy.” 

Patrick leaned into David’s chest, his hands sliding around his waist to settle just above his ass, and David’s skin tingled in their wake. “Sexy, huh?” 

“Mm, you know it,” David murmured as he ran his hands slowly up Patrick’s arms, leaning in for a kiss that started PG and rapidly increased in rating. God, David loved this, the insatiable crackle that was always there, lying dormant under his skin but ready to ignite into something bigger with just a look or a touch or a word. He’d never experienced it with anyone but Patrick and he hoped it never went away. 

“When’s Stevie showing up?” Patrick murmured into David’s lips. 

“‘A few hours’,” David quoted, running his hands across Patrick’s shoulders. “Plenty of time.” 

Patrick kissed him, warm and deep, and then stepped away, which was the wrong direction, _excuse me_. Whining, David leaned into Patrick again, who smiled and took another step back, tucking his hands into his pockets in a clear tell that he was struggling to keep them to himself. 

“After we dig out the door. Consider it motivation.” His eyes were bright, his cheeks flushed, and David damned this storm and Stevie’s window and the social taboo of having sex with other people in the room with every fibre of his being.

* * *

Digging the door out was an undertaking. Patrick went back out the window for the third time in as many days to wield a shovel from the outside while David dug them out from inside, dumping the snow into the large plastic totes he’d unearthed from the crawlspace. Whenever the totes filled up, he’d lug them up the stairs to the bathroom and empty them into the tub, cursing and grunting and hating every second of his life the entire time. 

It took two hours of teamwork to clear the door and create a set of rough steps down from the surface to the ground. 

David never wanted to touch a shovel again. 

Yes, he was aware of how much more digging needed to be done – the car was still completely buried and they were probably going to have to save the shed windows from the weight of the snow at some point – but he allowed himself the luxury of pretending none of that existed while he stripped and grabbed his dry, fire-warmed clothing from their little wardrobe pile. God, winter was such bullshit. 

But then a pair of _very fucking cold hands_ slid around his bare waist and he let out a sound that probably could have been classified as a scream by an ungenerous person, which was exactly what Patrick was because holy _shit_ , _why_. Such betrayal. 

Patrick cackled as David jolted out of his embrace, holding his hands up in acquiescence at David’s horrified look. “I’m sorry,” he managed between laughs. “It was too tempting.” 

Undeserved, unjustifiable, unfair _betrayal_. 

“You,” David announced, pointing accusingly at Patrick and his stupid pretty face, “are banned from ever touching me again. You cannot be trusted.” 

Patrick made of show of clasping his hands behind his bare back, leaning forward slightly as though moving in for a kiss if David weren’t out of range. “Better?” 

“Acceptable,” David grouched, closing the distance and sliding his (not ice block) hands over Patrick’s shoulders. Really, the rest of him was beautifully warm, the pale skin of his chest slightly flushed from the exertion of shoveling snow, the pink dissipating just above the waistband of his jeans. “Just keep your hands back there and we’ll be fine.” 

“Kinky,” Patrick murmured and raised his eyebrows at David’s look. “But also, with Stevie here I won’t be able to touch you _properly_ ,” he leered, “and she’ll probably be here for a few days, so…” 

Shit. “I may have spoken rashly,” David allowed, tilting his head to the side. 

Patrick smiled and nuzzled his nose against David’s. “How much time do we have left?” 

“That’s a big old question mark, but she said she’d text me when she leaves so we’ll have a ten-minute alarm. Ten-ish.” David shrugged his shoulders in emphasis of the _ish_. He had no idea how long a snowmobile would take to get to their place from Stevie’s, really, but figured ten was a good guess. 

“Living on the edge, I like it.” 

“Well, let’s make it good,” David said, perfunctorily unzipping Patrick’s pants and tugging them and his underwear down his hips. “We’ve got one last chance at privacy before Stevie shows up and ruins everything.” 

“You’re such a kind and loving friend, David,” Patrick laughed, stepping out of his clothes and pulling David down onto the mattress by his wrist. 

David landed semi-gracefully on his knees, then immediately rolled to his back to peel off his underwear. “She’d say something very similar if our positions were switched, don’t pretend.” 

“Oh, no, I’d never pretend to understand you two.” Patrick threw a leg over David’s hips and settled into a straddle, bracing himself on David’s chest, and suddenly David didn’t care that they were both still wearing their wool socks like a couple of sex heathens. “Your relationship is beyond me.” 

“Okay, no, nope, I’m done talking about Stevie, Stevie does not get another mention while we are naked with intent.” David couldn’t decide where he wanted to touch first and it showed in his hands, sliding over Patrick from hip to arm to chest to thigh. “Ix-nay Evie-stay.” 

“You’re the one still saying her name, not me,” Patrick retorted, tweaking David’s nipple. David yelped, bucking under Patrick’s weight, and raised an eyebrow in challenge. 

“Why don’t you make me say someone else’s name, then?” 

Patrick’s eyes darkened and David smirked into the kiss that followed. 

* * *

They were still in bed, exhausted and messy and sleepy, when Stevie’s text came through. David was reluctant to move, even after Patrick cleaned them both up with warm water and added some logs to the weakening fire and brought David’s clothing to within arm’s reach, because this bed was possibly the most comfortable place he’d ever been and no, he wasn’t exaggerating, Patrick, what an insulting accusation. 

But Patrick’s “I know Stevie’s seen worse, but do you really want Roland to catch you with your pants down?” got his ass in gear because no, no he did not. With a shudder of revulsion, David hauled on his clothes in double-time, and he had just straightened out the bed covers when they heard the snowmobile pull up onto the front lawn. 

Tugging on his toque (because the hair situation was a disaster best left between husbands, thanks), David trailed Patrick back to the front of the house and winced at the rush of cold air as he threw the door open. 

“Stevie! Roland!” Patrick called out, raising his hand in a greeting as he pulled his boots on. “How was the trip over?” 

Stevie, tiny and puffy in her winter clothes, was detaching herself from Roland’s back and she waved shortly at them before tugging off her helmet. Roland looked utterly ridiculous, decked out from head to toe in mismatched gear and absolutely coated in snow, but he flicked his visor up and hocked a loogie in a thoroughly repulsive manner before cheerfully returning Patrick’s hello. 

“Heya, Pat! Dave!” David twitched and Patrick’s smile shifted into that plastic one he always got around Roland. “Good, good trip. Cold, of course, and man you guys live far away, but good.” Roland twisted in his seat to help Stevie off the snowmobile, offering his hand out for her to balance with. She seemed to be light enough that the ice layer didn’t crack under her feet, so she shuffled over to the edge of the snow ravine Patrick was standing in and handed him her duffle bag. 

“This was very considerate of you, Roland,” Patrick said, reaching up to take Stevie’s bag from her with a warm smile. “We really appreciate it.” 

“Oh, well, you’re welcome, but no, I couldn’t take anything in payment, I’m not doing this to get paid, it’s all out of mayoral duty, y’know,” and David suppressed a sigh because he knew exactly where this was going. “Though I wouldn’t say no to some of that applesauce that Rollie Jr. likes so much.” Roland sucked air through his front teeth. “Just a couple or five jars, y’know, to offset the gas. I’m not asking for payback here, I’m just sayin’ that this thing doesn’t exactly sip gas, y’know, and it’s a bit of a haul to get out here from town, right?” 

David met Patrick’s eyes as he turned to look at him, and they had an entire silent conversation made of tiny facial twitches. _This wasn’t a part of the deal, David; we only live two kilometres out of town. No, but it’s just easier to give him the applesauce. It’s so expensive, though. Yes, but he’ll bring it up every single time we see him until the end of time; it’s worth the loss._

Conceding defeat with a small flare of his nostrils, Patrick said “Sure, Roland, let me go see what I can find. We might have some in the pantry.” And then he walked back into the house with Stevie’s bag and left David to deal with Roland alone because Patrick Brewer was a goddamn sore loser, ugh. 

Rolling his eyes, David slipped his feet into his winter boots and stepped out into the bright sun. Shading his eyes with a flat hand, he peered up at Stevie’s crouched form. “Hey, you. Need a hand down?” 

Stevie stared at the snow steps; they were more David-sized than Stevie-sized. “Yes. Yes, I do.” 

David held out his hand and Stevie took it, bracing herself as she navigated her way down with cautious movements, her braid slipping over her shoulder. 

“Gosh, your house doesn’t have much rise on it, does it? You’re right down on the ground.” Roland leaned over in his seat, letting out a low whistle as he peered down the depth of their shoveled entryway. “You’re like a couple of mole men! Living underground.” 

“It’s snow, Roland,” David said, aiming for a pleasant tone of voice. Stevie’s amused look told him he didn’t quite hit it. “And the house is low because there’s no basement.” 

Roland was undeterred. “Mole men!” 

Stevie snorted and David squeezed her hand in warning, but just she hopped down the last step and raised an entertained eyebrow at him in response. Before David could decide who to respond to first, Patrick reappeared with a clanking grocery bag and, bafflingly, an unopened package of toilet paper. 

“We only had two jars, Roland, so I hope that’s okay,” Patrick said lightly as he squeezed past David and Stevie and climbed up a few of the snow steps to get within reach of the snowmobile. David knew that was a blatant lie – they had some of the store’s overstock stashed in the guest room closet, including at least a dozen jars of applesauce – but he also knew when to shut up and let Patrick talk. 

“Oh, that’s okay, Pat, I’ll just grab the rest from you when the shop opens again!” David would have sworn he heard Patrick’s teeth grinding, but it was muffled by the crinkle of the toilet paper as he handed it over. 

“Also, I know you’ve been running all over hell and creation, but are you going near Lena’s any time soon? She posted on _Babbles_ that they’re running out of toilet paper and we’ve got plenty to spare if you can get it to her.” 

“Yeah, sure thing, can do. I’ll be going past her place now, actually – gotta go pick up some muffins from Ivan. Oh ho, this is the fancy stuff!” Roland exclaimed, turning the package in his hands to look at the brand. “This is what Jocelyn gets when it’s her turn to shop. Hoity toity, you two.” 

David could just _feel_ the toilet humour creeping into the conversation and removed himself from the possibility of hearing any of it by way of bustling Stevie, who looked far too amused, into the house. Patrick _hmmm_ ed and _aha_ ed at Roland for another minute as Stevie took off her outerwear, and David heard enough of Roland’s half of the conversation to know he was talking about Bob’s attempts to plough the roads instead of waiting for the MTO trucks. 

Patrick was eventually able to send Roland on his way by claiming they needed to get inside to tend to the fire, which Roland then promptly offered to help with, and David had a brief moment of panic until Patrick smoothly reminded Roland of the other errands he still had to do. Roland disappeared under a cloud of noxious blue smoke, the roar of the snowmobile fading as he zoomed off across the snow. 

Closing the door with a click, Patrick leaned back against it and gave David a pointed little look. David just shrugged helplessly – Roland was a walking, talking traumatic experience and Patrick was just so much better at dealing with him. David draped his arm over Patrick’s shoulders and pressed a kiss to his temple, an apology and a _thank you_ in one, and Patrick smiled and patted his hip. Taking that as the forgiveness and _you’re welcome_ it was, David turned his attention back to their guest. 

“Welcome to our humble but warm abode. You seem to have survived your trip with Roland.” 

“He’s not that bad.” David stared at her. “Okay, he is, but you get used to him.” 

“Honestly, I hope to live my life without ever attaining the status of _Used To Roland Schitt_ ,” David said with a shudder. 

“Fair.” Then she gave Patrick an up-and-down, smirking. “Nice hickey.” 

Patrick clapped a hand to his neck and turned to give David a look. David just shrugged, completely unrepentant. “You should see his thighs.” 

“ _David_.” 

Stevie’s eyes lit up, catching on to what direction their imbalanced social dynamic was leaning at that particular moment. “At least you don’t have to worry about being unprofessional when the hickeys are all over your thighs, I guess?” she added, because she was a perfect human being and knew exactly how to help David push Patrick’s buttons, as evidenced by the shade of red currently adorning his face. 

“Okay,” Patrick said shortly and turned on his heel, leaving David and Stevie to snigger at his retreating back. 

David picked up Stevie’s bag and outerwear and led her into the living room, gesturing broadly at their little set-up. “And this is our glamping situation.” 

Stevie stopped in the doorway and put her hands on her hips. “Ugh, it smells like sex in here. Sex and woodsmoke.” 

“Okay, we literally _just_ had a conversation about Patrick’s hickeys.” David put her bag on the couch and turned to give her a look. “What were you expecting? It’s not like we can open the windows for fresh air. Plus, we’re newlyweds – it’s a given.” 

“Five months isn’t newlyweds.” 

“It is in my books.” Stevie opened her mouth and David just continued, ploughing over whatever she was about to say. “Plus, it’s our home and you’re _very_ welcome for the invitation to not, what was it, _freeze your tits off_?” 

“If I’d known this was a part of the deal, I might have chosen to lose the tits,” Stevie drawled, but there wasn’t any strength behind it so David just rolled his eyes and started hanging her coat up to dry. “You couldn’t at least mask the smell? Where’s your weed?” Stevie stepped around the mattress to hold her hands out in front of the fire, rubbing them together enthusiastically. 

David shrugged and shook out a mitten. “We’re out. Haven’t made it out to the shop in a bit and I don’t like Twyla’s ex-step-cousin’s stuff.” 

“It is harsh,” Stevie agreed, meeting David’s eyes over her shoulder. “He needs to up his game. Legalisation has given people actual standards.” 

“Shock and horror,” David deadpanned, and Stevie huffed out a short laugh. 

“Are you two done talking about our sex life yet?” Patrick asked as he walked back into the room with a frozen container of David’s soup. 

“If you could call what we were doing _talking about it_ , then yes, we are,” David answered as he draped Stevie’s snowpants over the drying rack. “You’re safe to rejoin our society.” 

“Well, I don’t know if that’s ever true, but I’ll take it,” Patrick countered, picking up the large pot and setting it on top of the fire’s rack. 

“Especially since we switched to talking about weed,” Stevie added, moving out of Patrick’s way and heading for her bag on the couch. 

Patrick hummed, nodding. “Sex and weed – hot topics for a couple of upstanding citizens, certainly.” 

“Keep talking like that, Brewer, and I won’t share my stash with you,” Stevie threatened. “Just me and David, high as kites, and you’ll get to babysit us.” 

“Oooh,” David cut in. “I like that plan. I like responsible, sober Patrick herding the thoroughly intoxicated. Always funny.” Fuzzy memories of running away from Patrick while hand-in-hand with Stevie flooded his brain. There may have been a dog involved? There were definitely popsicles. Good times. 

“Veto.” But Patrick was utterly failing to suppress his smile and it made David’s insides feel all warm. 

“Hmm, we’ll see,” David said and turned back to Stevie, half intrigued by whatever she was digging through her bag for – Sleepover Stevie was a magic unicorn of delights who always brought the best treats, be they in alcohol, drug, or snack food form – and half eager to organise her clothing into their temporary fireside wardrobe. 

“He’s gonna make you change your clothes,” Patrick warned Stevie, giving her a look as he cracked open the tupperware and dumped the contents into the pot. 

“Wait, what? Why?” She looked down at her damp-at-the-edges jeans and flannel. 

David tilted his head back to look at the ceiling. Why did no one understand? “Do you want to stay wet and cold instead?” 

“I can dry? There’s literally a fire right here.” 

No one understood. David tugged Stevie’s bag away from her and rummaged through it, ignoring her protestations, and pulled out flannel pyjama bottoms, a hoodie, and a tee. He thrust them in her general direction, eyebrow raised, and Stevie just stared at him. “I will give you food and beer if you get changed,” he said, because bribery usually worked. 

And it did this time, too, as Stevie rolled her eyes and took her clothes from him. “Has he been like this the whole time?” she asked Patrick as she started stripping. 

“Yup.” 

“Hello, I’m right here.” Honestly, these people. 

“Mm, there you are,” Patrick hummed, standing from his crouch and catching David’s gesturing hand to kiss the back of it. “Does a Man’s Best suit you, Stevie? Or I’ve got a couple Red Mountains left.” 

“Whatever’s closest,” she answered, slightly muffled as she pulled the hoodie on over her head. 

“It’s all just in the door,” Patrick tossed over his shoulder as he left the room, and David watched in amusement as Stevie’s confused expression popped out from the neck of her sweater. 

“A Canadian fridge?” he explained, dubious, but Stevie’s face shifted into a look understanding. David had needed a clarification, but apparently Patrick hadn’t been joking when he’d said that storing beer and perishables in the packed snow at the back door wasn’t a completely absurd and foreign concept to most rural Ontarians. 

Freaks, the lot of them. 

Then Stevie finished changing and David finished hanging all her damp clothing up and Patrick reappeared with three beers and a box of clementines, so they all settled on the mattress, facing the fire, and clinked their bottles together in a silent toast. 

“I’m glad you’re okay, Stevie,” Patrick said quietly, tilting his head towards her as he took a drink. 

Stevie gave him a look. “If I didn’t know better, I’d say the cold did something to your head, but I guess you’ve always been this sincere. How do you manage?” she asked David, turning to raise her eyebrows at him. 

David met Patrick’s eyes, smirking at the amused and slightly exasperated expression on his face. “Oh, it grows on you.” 

“Gross,” Stevie said into her beer, and David just laughed and clinked her bottle again. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> STEVIE HAS ARRIVED. THE PARTY MAY NOW BEGIN.
> 
>   1. I can’t even tell you how much I laughed at **[Stevie Butt** 💩 **]** when I first thought of it. Finding your own jokes funny is the first step to being cool, right?? 😐
>   2. Roland is a hoot to write.
>   3. [Canadian](https://static.boredpanda.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2019/07/meanwhile-in-funny-memes-154-5d2ed5d9339a6__605.jpg) [fridges](https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2zgfa3CcAAXYbY?format=jpg&name=small)!
> 



	6. Day Four

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Lots of booze and weed in this one. Blame Stevie; David certainly does.

Stevie, David decided, was a very bad influence. There could be no other explanation as to why he found himself playing a game of boozy Two Truths & A Lie at half past noon on a… Wednesday. He was pretty sure it was Wednesday. (It might be Thursday.)

Yes, the power outage and the truly outrageous amount of snow outside may also have had something to do with the situation, but Stevie was the newest introduced variable and then suddenly there were drinking games, so he was confident in his assessment.

“David. Earth to David.” 

Oh, right.

Clearing his throat, David held up a hand and raised a finger for each point as he said it. “My middle name is my father’s first name, Adelina was my nanny, and my left nipple is pierced.”

Patrick and Stevie gave him identical flat looks. “Those are all truths, David,” Patrick said with some disappointment. But David just smirked and shook his head condescendingly.

“I swear one of those statements is a lie. I swear on, on, I dunno, on the store. On Patrick. On my favourite pair of Balenciagas.”

“I rate the same as a pair of shoes?” Patrick asked incredulously. “The store, sure, but shoes?”

David just flapped his hand at him. “You know I love you more. It was just an example.” Patrick harrumphed, which was _adorable_ , what.

Stevie had moved her gaze to David’s chest, clearly trying to remember which nipple was the pierced one. David shimmied his shoulders at her, which earned him a brief glare. “It’s his left, Stevie,” Patrick confirmed, squinting at David suspiciously.

“Maybe Adelina wasn’t technically a nanny?” Stevie ventured, turning to look at Patrick with a questioning expression. “Maybe she was like an au pair or something.”

“Isn’t that just rich speak for ‘nanny’?”

“Shit, ‘nanny’ is rich speak for nanny,” Stevie quipped, leaning back on her hands as Patrick laughed. David just blew them both an obnoxious kiss.

“And I’ve seen his birth certificate; he’s definitely David Jonathan Rose.”

David struggled to contain himself, dancing in place where he sat cross-legged on a pillow. This was too funny. “C’mon, you two are supposed to know everything about me,” he teased, biting his lip at the competitive look Patrick sent him. “Tick tock, m’love.”

Stevie shared a look with Patrick, who sighed. “Okay, fine, we give up. What’s the lie?”

David tucked his lips between his teeth to stifle the undoubtedly insufferable smile that was trying to escape. “The first one. My dad’s name isn’t Jonathan.”

Stevie’s “Wait, what?” overlapped neatly with Patrick’s “Yes, it is,” and David let the smile loose, delighting in the reveal.

“Nope. His name is John.”

Patrick scoffed. “That’s the same thing. Drink, David.” Stevie held out the bottle of wine imperiously.

“No, it isn’t!” David squawked, waving his hands over their belligerence. “His birth certificate says John, with an H, and he goes by Johnny, also with an H. Jonathan is a separate name – no H, even when you shorten it.”

“But your mother calls him Jonathan all the time, she—”

“—Is outrageously pretentious and likes multisyllable names. She calls him Jonathan because she likes it more than John. He just goes along with it because that’s what he does.”

Patrick’s mouth was hanging open. “Are you serious?”

“Completely. One does not sully Two Truths and a Lie.” With a single finger, David redirected Stevie’s outstretched hand and the bottle it held back to her. “One also does not underestimate the arrogance of Moira Rose. Drink up.”

Patrick took the bottle from Stevie, drinking straight from it in the manner they had all agreed was acceptable in the face of washing more dishes than strictly necessary. With a slight grimace, he passed the bottle over to Stevie, who was still staring at David. 

“...Your family, man,” she finally said, slowly shaking her head as she brought the bottle to her lips.

David tilted his head at her. “I’m very aware, yes.”

But then it’s Patrick’s turn and David guessed the lie (blue is not his favourite colour, he just looks good in it) but Stevie had to drink when she thought that he was lying about making his mother’s famous cookies better than she can. David has had those cookies – they were incredible and, though he will never ever tell her, they were definitely better than Marcy’s.

Both David and Patrick drank on Stevie’s turn though, and she looked insufferably smug as a result.

“Seriously, my hair is this dark and you both thought I was born a redhead? How drunk are you?”

Patrick frowned in the way he only ever did when he was more than a few glasses of wine in. “Not very.” Such a liar. “It’s pretty common for an adult’s hair to be a wildly different colour than their baby hair.”

“Okay, fine, but you actually, like, know babies and stuff.” Stevie waved Patrick off, who laughed and tottered slightly where he sat. “What’s David’s excuse?”

David gestured broadly with the bottle of wine in his hand. “I read about the almost prom queen thing in your yearbook, but I thought you hated kids as much as I do? Since when do you want kids, Budd?” He could hear the horror in his own voice and did nothing to temper it.

“Since always, Rose.” Stevie pinned him with a look. “I just don’t like other people’s kids.”

“Huh.” David chewed that over for a moment. “Good fucking thing we didn’t work out then, eh?”

“I’ll drink to that,” Patrick said with a giggle, and David kissed his temple. Stevie just rolled her eyes affectionately.

* * *

They only managed a few more rounds after that, the plentiful wine aggressively poking at whichever part of the brain controls sleep and knocking them all out in a disorderly pile of limbs in the centre of the mattress. 

They woke up piecemeal about an hour later: David first, shivering in the cool air left behind by their neglected fire, shortly followed by Patrick and finally Stevie, who was clearly enjoying her prime location of using Patrick’s chest as a pillow.

“You’re so warm, jeeze. Why are dudes always so warm?”

“You’re welcome?” Patrick laughed, squeezing her to him with the arm wrapped around her shoulders. She protested vocally but actively nestled closer, master of the contradiction.

David watched them, resettling his toque and thinking bleary affectionate thoughts, and examined himself absently for jealousy. What better time to look for some _veritas_ than while _in vino_? He was kind of proud to come up completely empty handed, though – nothing but warm tenderness and other embarrassing things he’d likely deny ever feeling. Hurrah, progress.

Then he took a sneaky pic of them and sent it to Stevie with a text reading _you harlot_ , because jokes like that were funny if he felt secure enough to make them and he did right now.

Patrick eventually extracted himself from Stevie’s heatseeking and got the fire roaring again, while Stevie dragged her duffle bag into her lap and produced her version of ambrosia: trashy snack foods. The three gas station plastic bags that appeared from the depths of her duffle were filled with their favourite flavours of chips, both types of cheezies (because Patrick was a weirdo who liked the crunchy ones), off-brand Swedish Fish, some slightly suspicious looking cookies swathed in plastic wrap, and an entire tub of sour keys. David felt like the heart eyes emoji. Stevie was a gutter rat and a genius and he just really loved her a lot, okay?

But, even drunk, Patrick refused to survive on junk food alone and he got another container of soup into the pot to thaw while David wandered into the kitchen to find them water jugs in an attempt to be responsible. Stevie, ever the party-hound, cracked open another bottle of wine.

Fed, hydrated, and snacked-up, David sprawled out flat on the mattress, starfishing to take up as much space as possible. Stevie and Patrick were on the couch, passing the bottle of wine back and forth, so there was a lot of space to take up. Reaching his hands up above his head to grip the edge of the mattress, he eased into a stretch, arching his chest up and wiggling his toes in pleasure. He heard Stevie snicker, so he treated her to a lazy middle finger, but then there was a twinge, some muscles protesting in his lower back, and he recoiled with a slight pout.

“Okay, I hurt.” David turned to give Patrick a look, all accusation and grief. “I told you I have a bad back.”

“David, you do not have a bad back.” Patrick returned his look, his eyes wide in unsympathetic mockery. “You just didn’t listen to me when I told you to lift with your knees. Anyone’s back would hurt after the way you were digging.”

David waved this away with a flippant hand. “Regardless,” he said, rolling over onto his front and gesturing pointedly at his lower back, “I hurt.” 

“Good to know you’re a pain in your own ass, too,” Stevie said, and then widened her eyes in innocence at David’s glare.

“Are you angling for a back massage? You can just _ask_ , you know,” Patrick suggested, tilting his head at David, who made a little affronted sound because maybe he was angling for a massage but there was absolutely no need to call him out on it.

“No,” David said, for the sole purpose of being contrary, and then regretted it a little. “I was just trying to make a point.”

Patrick smiled his little corners-down _I don’t believe you but you’re cute_ smile. “Uh huh.” And, well, now David was stuck with his impulsive choice because there was no changing his mind in the face of that smile – Patrick wasn’t the only competitive asshole in this marriage, to their occasional mutual chagrin.

Stevie disrupted their little exchange, handing the wine to Patrick as she reached for her duffle bag where it sat at the base of the couch. “We can break out the herbal analgesic if you want.”

David sat up, intrigued. “Is it the good stuff?”

“Which good stuff? We smoke a lot of good stuff.”

“The SyFy movie marathon and Futurama stuff.”

“Ah, no. This is Great British Bake Off and Trailer Park Boys.”

“ _Oh_.” Great memories. David nodded. “That is also the good stuff.”

Patrick was watching them like a tennis match, eyes snapping between them as they spoke. David blew him a kiss and he laughed. “I’m loving this classification system.”

“Okay, it’s a great system. If you can still say pithivier in a Scottish accent and not cry laughing at the sound, it’s not good stuff. That,” David indicated the little white tub Stevie had unearthed from her bag, “does not allow anyone to say pithivier in any accent without laughter.”

“Dare I ask what pithivier is?”

David gestured broadly, his rings catching the light from the fire. “I don’t know, some form of delicious looking baked good. That’s not the point.”

Patrick’s face was lit up with amusement, and David loved the look of it. “And what is the point?”

“Weed, yes,” Stevie summed up, and pulled out her rolling papers.

* * *

“Y’know, I don’t think I’ve ever seen you with a braid.” David nudged Stevie’s leg with his toes. “Ponytail, sure, but braid? Never.”

They were sitting in a circle (can it be a circle with three people? is it just a sad triangle? Patrick would know) on the mattress, passing around a joint and the bottle of wine, and David felt a glimmer of concern for the future state of the blankets but really couldn’t be assed to follow up on it. They were the second-tier blankets from the guest room, anyhow.

Stevie scowled, swatting at his foot with the hand not holding the joint. “You’ve never seen me go this long without a shower either. Nice hat, by the way.”

Ouch, okay, that was rude. “Mm, thanks. Have you tried brushing it through?”

“Brushing… what through?” She gave him a baffled look.

David hummed, gesturing to the mattress between his outspread legs. “Give me your brush and sit.” At Stevie’s flat look, he lunged for her bag, which she snatched away possessively. “You’re like a little raccoon! Were you never taught to share? Seriously, just let me try. My hair’s a tragic lost cause but I might be able to salvage yours.”

Stevie glanced at Patrick, who shrugged. David held out his hand expectantly. Stevie rolled her eyes and produced her hairbrush from the end pocket of the bag, slapping it into David’s hand. He frowned at the brush – plastic, with sparsely placed bristles, and exactly the antithesis of what he needed. 

Sighing dramatically, David leaned over to the temporary hair-and-skin-care product shelf beside him, which he’d steadily bulked up over the past few days with his runs into the bedroom and bathroom to fetch various items, and rifled through it in search of his soft boar bristle brush. Successful, he turned back to see Stevie and Patrick staring at him. 

“What?” he said defensively, then didn’t give them time to answer. “Stevie, come here.” He pointed at the space in front of him again, settling the two brushes within range at his hip.

“You better not hurt my hair,” she threatened, scooting across the blankets to sit in front of him.

“Oh, ye of little faith.” David folded his legs in to sit tailor style, shins up against Stevie’s rump, and worked the elastic from the end of her braid. Stevie held the joint up by her shoulder for him and he leaned in to take a drag with a pleased noise.

“So what is this?” Patrick asked, filling his plastic cup from the water jug. “What’s with the brush?”

Unraveling Stevie’s hair, David tilted his head in thought. “Back when shampoos were a laughable pipe dream or, like, eggs and vinegar–” he grimaced, “–people used to brush their hair really, really thoroughly in order to disperse the oil through the whole length. It makes the hair at the scalp less oily and brings good oil to the ends. It’s where that whole ‘a hundred strokes a day’ mantra that old ladies love came from.” He gestured with Stevie’s brush in his hand, waving it in a circle. “It only works with a soft brush like mine, though – this thing will only detangle. Be grateful I’ve permitted your hair the use of my precious boar bristle, Stevie.”

“...How do you know this?” Stevie sounded perplexed as he started running her brush through her loose hair, gently smoothing out the knots.

“You pick up weird shit in art school, okay?”

“He mends clothing, too,” Patrick added, holding Stevie’s now water-filled cup out to her. She traded it for the joint and took a sip. “Fixed a hole in my favourite shirt the other week, actually.”

David squawked as Stevie tilted her head to stare up at him. “Head forward, please!” She refused, and he sighed. “Fashion practicum. There was a whole tailoring workshop in the basement of the Physical Arts building.”

“Please tell me there are photos of you in terrible clothing that you made.” Stevie looked forward again and David resumed his brushing, but Patrick’s expression told of Stevie’s continued interest. “Patrick, tell me there are photos.”

David snapped his head up to glare at Patrick, sending mental waves of don’t you dare in his direction. Patrick looked torn, his eyes flicking between their two faces.

“Patrick. Show me the photos.”

“Tempting, but no.” Patrick raised his nigh-on-invisible eyebrows at Stevie, and David let his satisfaction settle onto his face. “You’ll have to get them out of him.”

“Um, as if,” David said incredulously. “I’m going to delete them all as soon as the power comes back on.”

“Alexis still owes me a couple favours,” Stevie countered, and Patrick smiled through a stream of smoke.

David huffed. “And Alexis knows that I have more dirt on her than anyone does, so let’s see you try it, shall we?” But Stevie just hummed in response, so David narrowed his eyes at the back of her head and continued his task, the brush gliding easily through Stevie’s sleek hair.

Eventually David swapped brushes, slipping his hand into the stirrup of his boar bristle brush and gathering up a section of Stevie’s hair to work it through. Considering the cheap drug store products she used in it, Stevie actually had really nice hair. It needed a trim, David noted absently, aware of the split ends when he smoothed the brush over them, but it was in surprisingly good shape for how poorly she treated it. He wasn’t going to tell her that, though – he was still working on cajoling her into using products from their store and any praise about the current state of her hair, no matter how faint, would be highly detrimental to that goal.

Stevie and Patrick were talking about... something, but David wasn’t paying attention, their voices rising and falling in a hum around him as he let himself get lost in the repetitive motion of long, even strokes from scalp to tip, scalp to tip. Stevie occasionally offered him the joint or the wine over her shoulder and David occasionally took part, but he mostly just revelled in the floaty detached feeling that came with mild inebriation, good company, and a monotonous yet pleasant task.

When Stevie started swaying slightly with the motion of the stokes, David realised the conversation that had been surrounding him had stopped and – he skimmed back over his mental record – had stopped a while ago. David blinked and shook his head to clear it, looking up over Stevie’s head at Patrick, who had his chin resting on his upraised knees and was watching David and Stevie with an adoring smile.

“She’s almost asleep,” Patrick said quietly, voice a whisper. “That looks really relaxing. Kind of makes me wish I had longer hair. _Kind of_ , David,” he added, smirking when David perked up. “Don’t get excited.”

David narrowed his eyes, secretly adding that little bit of detail to his long-term plot for Patrick’s curls, and silently split a section of hair from Stevie’s crown into thirds. Stevie startled slightly, sighing as she woke up or came out of her trance or whatever at the change in activity, and David made quick work of the French braid he was weaving, working her hair into it piece by piece and tying the end off with her elastic.

“A great success,” he announced, tucking her braid over her shoulder. Stevie reached up to run her fingers over her head, her fingers digging into her scalp. “You could probably make that a regular part of your routine and cut down on showers, honestly. Your hair took it really well.” 

“Well, shit,” Stevie eked out through a yawn, pulling away from David and shuffling back over to her previous spot to recreate their circle. “I feel like I should pay you. That was more relaxing than any spa day.”

“I think the weed helped,” David hedged, nodding at Patrick as he unearthed Stevie’s tub of weed from the blankets. “And the wine.”

“Maybe. But still – feel free to do that any day.”

Patrick got another joint going, neatly rolling it on his thigh and holding it between his lips to light it with the bic. David was inappropriately turned on at the sight and forced himself to look away so he wouldn’t do something unseemly like pounce on Patrick with Stevie sitting beside them both.

Stevie, bless her, unwittingly provided a distraction. “So how did old school hair brushing techniques come up in _art school_?”

“What, like you didn’t learn obscure trivia facts from your… whatever degree? Wait, what did you go to school for?” David scoured his memory. Nope, nothing. “How do I not know this? How have I known you for as long as I have and not know this?”

“Do you want that answer in point form or as an essay?” Stevie deadpanned.

David frowned at her. “I’m never brushing your hair again. Do you know?” he added, turning to Patrick, who shook his head in bemusement as he handed the joint over.

“Care to make a guess?” 

David squinted at her. “No. You’ll just get all aggro if I guess wrong.”

“Since when do I ever get _aggro_? What are you, thirteen?”

“Listen, just because you aren’t connected with the youth of today—”

“—Oh yes, that’s exactly how teenagers refer to themselves, good job—"

“—doesn’t mean I’m not, and—"

“Marine biology,” Patrick suddenly said, cutting David off mid sentence. He and Stevie both turned to stare at Patrick.

“What?”

“She wouldn’t be making us guess if she thought we’d get it right, David.” Patrick smirked at Stevie and she returned the look, eyes glittering. “We’re more likely to get it if we think out in left field.”

That actually made a kind of sense but, “Ugh, baseball.”

“Hey, you’re learning!”

David fluttered a hand at Patrick, who laughed, and refocused on Stevie. “Not marine biology, no,” she said.

“Economics,” David blurted. She shook her head and reached for the joint, so David handed it to her.

“Fine arts.” David actually laughed out loud and didn’t feel bad about it because Stevie did too. “Or not,” Patrick amended lightly.

“Computers and shit. Uh,” David continued, gesturing under the combined amusement of Stevie and Patrick. “Computer Science, that’s the one.” Stevie just shook her head, her smile wide.

“Horticulture.” Patrick looked like an interrogator, utterly keyed in on his mark, and Stevie just exhaled a long stream of smoke.

“Nope.”

“What even _is_ horticulture?” David asked, because it sounds like a disease.

“Plant farming.”

Gross. “Philosophy?” That could explain a lot.

“No, but I hung out with a bunch of them. They were jerks but they had great weed.” Ah, a lot was indeed explained.

“Math,” Patrick said with a completely unearned sense of finality. But Stevie’s eyes widened slightly, so maybe it was a little earned.

“Nooo...” she drawled, passing Patrick the joint in a blatant attempt to derail him. He took it anyway.

“But it’s math adjacent, isn’t it?” Patrick hedged, bringing the joint to his lips. “Almost math.”

David eyed Stevie up and down, and she blank faced him in return. “What’s almost math but not math? Physics?”

“Not econ, you already said that.” Staring at Stevie through a cloud of smoke, Patrick drummed his fingers against his thigh.

“Is statistics a major?” David asked, almost absently. “Can you get a degree in statistics?”

“Well, according to that expensive piece of paper sitting in my desk drawer, you sure can.” Stevie barked a laugh into the stunned silence that followed her little declaration.

“Stats? You have a stats degree?” David could hear his voice increasing in pitch, and Patrick just smoothly handed him the joint. 

“Unless I hallucinated four years of my life, yes, I have a stats degree.”

David was honestly a little distressed. He’d just assumed Stevie had done psych or sociology or anthro, some generic B.A. whatever, something normal people take and then do nothing with. But statistics? His world had just flipped upside down. “Okay but seriously, how did I not know this?”

“I don’t talk about it. It wasn’t exactly a practical degree.” Stevie shrugged. “But I got an eighty-percent scholarship, so I went. There were no jobs for a stats grad when I was done, so I came back home.” She held out the mug-turned-ashtray and David dropped the killed butt into it without looking, eyes still fixed on Stevie as she continued to upend his life. “I’ve gotten more use out of my French minor than my stats major. When Francophones come to the motel, I can actually talk to them.”

“You speak French?” At least that was Patrick. David already knew that bit, thank God – any more perception-ruining revelations about his best friend and he might start rethinking his entire definition of _knowing_ someone. Kids and stats, what the fuck.

“Sure do, mon ami.” She’d produced a new joint from... somewhere and was in the process of lighting it, which made the whole French thing way sexier than it otherwise would have been.

So then Patrick said something in French, because he was a show-off, and Stevie responded, because she kinda was too (just more secretly), and David sat there, with no more French to his name than knowing how to order room service, and pouted a little.

Patrick, bless him, noticed and reached out to pat David’s knee.

“David used to know Russian.”

Stevie, midway through passing the joint to Patrick, snapped her head around to stare at David, who rolled his eyes. “Oh my God, Patrick, don’t just tell people that, that’s an exaggeration.”

“You said you used to speak as much Russian as you did English.” Patrick pointed at him accusingly with the joint.

David threw his hands in the air, then fumbled to catch his blanket as it slid off his shoulders. “Yes, when I was like _four_. I wasn’t exactly reading Dostoevsky.” At Stevie’s continued baffled look, he explained further. “Adelina’s Russian. Alexis and I picked it up from her.” He held his hand out for the joint, and Patrick passed it over as he exhaled a stream of smoke.

“Bet your parents were thrilled with that.” Stevie’s eyes were wide and intrigued, and David wasn’t really sure why. His ability to follow the thread of a conversation was eroding away; he squinted at the joint in his hand, assigning blame.

“Don’t even think they noticed, honestly. I should ask them.”

Stevie wiggled in place like an excited child. “Ooh, can I be in the room when you do?”

“Ugh,” David said and put his free hand on Stevie’s face to make her go away, and Patrick burst out laughing, which set David off because seriously, those giggles, so precious.

They slowly made their way through another bottle of wine – white this time, and they all made the same unsubtle joke about how David was the only one who liked it – and the remains of the joint and most of the snacks before David realised he’d forgotten about a rather important aspect of drinking with his husband. He had learned long ago that there was a critical point in Patrick’s inebriation journey where he tipped from tanked-but-trying-very-hard-to-be-conscientious into _utter frat boy_. As Patrick wandered back into the room from his bathroom adventure, brandishing the bottle of bottom shelf vodka that had gone dusty on the drink cart, David realised they’d blindly breezed by that boundary sometime in the past hour. He suddenly saw the trajectory of rest of the night spool out in front of him – there were going to be regrets in the morning.

“Oh God, Patrick, are you trying to kill us?”

“C’monnnn,” Patrick wheedled drunkenly, slumping back onto the mattress with a grin. “I’m tired of wine.”

“Maybe wine’s tired of you,” Stevie scoffed nonsensically, hugging the empty bottle to her chest and giving Patrick a hurt look.

Patrick patted the top of her head fondly, somehow managing to completely steer clear of being condescending and landing firmly on affectionate. It was the eyes, David concluded. It was hard to take anything Patrick did personally when he looked at you with his ridiculous eyes. The eyes and the smile, that is, which was out in full force as Patrick wiped dust from the bottle and wiggled it in David’s direction in what was probably supposed to be a tantalizing way.

Well, David conceded as he reached for the bottle, he’d done stupider things for that smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>   1. The John/Jon/Jonathan thing bothered me from the first moment Moira called him “Jonathan”, so I’ve headcanoned it into submission.
>   2. Adelina can be a Russian name and that’s where my mind first went after she was mentioned in the show, so I stuck with it.
>   3. I love when people have educational backgrounds that I would not have guessed in a million years. I figure Stevie would be one of those people.
> 



	7. Day Five

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Gah, sorry this is late – life got away from me for a couple days and the edits fought back pretty hard. But here we are, the last chapter! There’s a teeny smidge of angst here. David’s panic finally catches up to him and there’s some implications about trauma in Stevie’s past, so it’s not nice for a couple of paragraphs. However, this is supposed to be a fluff piece, so I promise it’s short and things get better. :)

David woke up firmly snuggled against Patrick, completely ensconced in blankets pulled up over his head, and enduring a roaring headache that he felt down to his fingertips.

Breathing slowly, eyes still tightly shut, he took stock: a dry mouth that tasted like bitter ash, tight skin that spoke of dehydration, nausea roiling his stomach, and, of course, the previously acknowledged headache from hell. Whatever it was that he did last night, he hoped it was worth it.

Nosing against Patrick, whose chest had taken on the role of pillow, David inhaled his comforting scent in an attempt to calm his stomach. There was a note of sourness to Patrick though, something of sweated out toxins and sharp smoke – apparently David had had a partner in his revelry. Rubbing his face into Patrick’s shirt, David sighed and soaked up the comfort of contact. Waking up next to people after a night of imbibing used to be a gross and humiliating moment, full of awkward evictions by whichever party was the host (assuming someone in the bed actually was the host – not a guarantee, unfortunately) and silent but fervent wishes to his future self to remember to leave _before_ falling unconscious beside randoms. Now, however, the relief that came with tangled limbs and the connection of skin on gloriously familiar skin was easily the best part of waking up feeling like week-old roadkill. Not a high bar to clear, admittedly, but David wasn’t one to quibble over details when his body was staging such an unpleasant mutiny.

Skin contact with Patrick was continuing to prove itself to be a lovely balm, though, and David, intent on following the path of least pain, pursued it. Mouthing aimlessly at Patrick’s chest through his shirt, David’s hands started wandering, searching for the edges of Patrick’s clothing. He slid his hand along Patrick’s stomach, then down to his hip, fingers dipping under the waistband of his pyjama pants to graze over the soft skin at the crease of his thigh. Patrick’s breathing changed, a sharp inhale followed by a long, slow exhale heralding his return to consciousness, and a clumsy hand moved up David’s back to cup the back of his neck.

Patrick let out a low hum and David popped his head out from the blankets, gently latching his mouth onto the underside of Patrick’s jaw and trailing dry kisses down the column of his neck. He could almost feel Patrick swimming through the molasses of his hangover, slowly becoming more responsive to David’s equally lethargic attentions, his hands travelling over and then under David’s shirt to stroke his chest hair, smooth over his ribs, slide down to haphazardly grab his ass. David made a low noise deep in his throat, his hips kicking forward without his say-so, and he pulled Patrick’s earlobe between his teeth as the hand exploring the top of Patrick’s thigh moved to wrap around—

 _THWAP_.

“Fuck!” David brought his arms up over his head, prepared to fend off more attacks from above. When none came, he peeked out and met Patrick’s wide, baffled gaze over the decorative throw pillow from the couch that had suddenly appeared between them. Twisting around, David squinted and took in the still upraised arm attached to the prone figure on the couch. Memories flooded David’s brain, updating him on all the things he’d forgotten in his morning-after haze. Oh, right. _Whoops_.

“Shit, Stevie, oh my God,” Patrick babbled, half laughing as he levered himself up onto his elbow. “I totally forgot you were here, shit. I’m so sorry.”

Stevie turned her head on her remaining pillow and squinted blearily at them through the drape of her hair. “I didn’t figure you suddenly turned exhibitionist. David, on the other hand—”

“David is _extremely_ hungover right now and forgot reality existed outside of his bed, thank you,” David grouched, pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes in a fruitless attempt to stop the throbbing. “What time is it?”

“Ass o’clock,” came the grumpy response from the couch and Patrick snorted.

“Yes, thank you, very helpful.” David fumbled around for his phone, finding it half-wedged under the mattress. Recoiling from the brightness of the screen, he groaned. “It’s not even seven. What is this cruelty.”

“The downside of day drinking is falling asleep at a decent hour,” Patrick said into his pillow, his face fully smushed into the cotton. “We crashed at like eleven. Eight hours of sleep later, voilà.”

“Fuck off with the French, oh my God,” David whined.

But then Stevie muttered something David didn’t understand and Patrick barked out a laugh and David hated everyone.

“This is bullying. This is harassment and bullying and you’re both extremely mean.”

“Your voice is extremely mean,” Stevie retorted flatly, pulling her pillow over her head.

David blinked and drew in a breath to ask what the hell that even meant, but Patrick sloppily covered his mouth with a hand. “Please, stop. I cannot listen to you two right now. My head might actually explode.”

Kissing Patrick’s palm apologetically, David redirected his thoughts away from the familiarity of bickering with Stevie. Unfortunately, the next most prominent train crossing his mind could be summarised as _hangovers suck_ , and David wasn’t sure that focusing on that would be particularly conducive to a) recovery, or b) not whining.

Seriously, his mouth tasted like old pennies and his leg hair hurt and his body had been rudely disrupted from its path to a lazy orgasm, which was never a nice feeling but was especially unhappy-making when the non-orgasm state of being was so fucking atrocious. It was a stark reminder why mixing wine, weed, and vodka was so last decade. Being thirty-mumble truly sucked sometimes.

Stevie removed the pillow from her face, her movements lethargic and sloppy. “Please tell me you are well stocked in pain killers. I have like three expired Tylenol somewhere in the bottom of my bag.”

They were indeed well stocked – David was loath to suffer a headache that didn’t need to be suffered, so their medicine cabinet was always full up on various over-the-counters. However, the medicine cabinet was upstairs and they were not. “Dibs not getting the pills,” David said quickly, touching his finger to his nose. Patrick sighed, long and weary.

“I’m a guest,” Stevie added, hugging her pillow. “You can’t make me.”

Patrick opened one eye to glare at her. “You literally have a key to our front door. How much of a guest are you?”

“Am I on the deed?”

“Did your stats degree turn into a law degree?” Patrick muttered into David’s arm, and David was pretty sure Stevie didn’t hear but that was okay.

A long minute passed, Patrick’s face buried against David and David trying very, very hard to be patient, but he was only human, and a Rose to boot, so his patience ran out sooner rather than later.

“Paaaaaatriiiiickkkk,” he whimpered quietly, trying to pitch his voice into something less grating while still hitting the right level of obnoxious. It was a struggle but he was pretty sure he succeeded.

“David, I swear to God,” Stevie growled, her already deep voice nearing the subvocal range. “If you do not shut up, I am going to ram this pillow down your throat.”

“I will get us pills and water and I will get the fire going, but you’re making your own coffee,” Patrick grumbled, pressing a kiss to David’s cheek that belied his irritation as he peeled himself out of bed.

“You’re the best husband,” David called after him, only feeling a little guilty.

Patrick was gone only briefly, returning with a bottle of ibuprofen and half a package of water bottles, and looking a little green around the gills. David winced as Patrick dropped his finds to the floor between the mattress and the couch, the crinkle and slap of plastic enormously loud to his poor little ears.

“Fuck the fire,” Patrick gritted out before popping two pills into his mouth and chugging an entire bottle of water, flopping facedown on the bed with a groan. Okay, yeah, David didn’t actually want to _torture_ his husband, so the fire could wait – blankets would be enough. David shook a few pills into his hand, then tossed the bottle at Stevie while idly pining for his lost days of illegal prescription meds – none of this _extra stength liqui-gel_ nonsense that took ages to kick in. However, these didn’t come with their own hangovers, nor the occasional frightening side effect, so maybe the trade-off was worth it.

The slow, mediocre nature of the pills did give him plenty of opportunity to settle his thoughts, though, turning them inwards to focus on regulating his breathing and placidly waiting for his screaming body to hush up a bit. The room was eerily quiet, all three occupants having retreated from any concept of socialisation, and the crackle of the fire that had previously been their near-constant companion having been traded in for silently glowing embers sometime overnight. Even the wind, seemingly ubiquitous during Schitt’s Creeks winters, had died down and taken its howling with it.

Never one to take particular solace in stillness, David felt himself getting twitchy. “Is anyone going to kill me if I put on music?” 

Met with a resoundingly indifferent silence that he took as a green light, David opened one eye to scroll through his downloaded music. Tapping on his _chill vibes & soothing songs_ playlist, he cranked the volume on his phone down to something mostly inoffensive and tossed it aside.

They spent the next hour or so marinating in their misery, silently communing in the mutually sympathetic bond of the incredibly hungover. But when the playlist ended, cutting to dead air in the absence of an internet connection, David’s tolerance for passive pain acceptance died with it.

“Okay,” he announced, then frowned at the state of his voice. He cleared his throat and tried again. “Okay, this is getting ridiculous. Who wants hair of the dog?”

Patrick groaned quietly into his pillow. “Does that even work? I can’t even think about alcohol right now.”

“I’ve always been very susceptible to placebos, so who knows. Stevie?”

“Way ahead of you,” she mumbled, already sitting up and magicking a half-full bottle of wine out from under the couch. 

They finished off the bottle quickly, passing it between them in a sad, droopy imitation of their good-natured camaraderie from the night before. Patrick only gagged once, meaning David only had to threaten him with expulsion from the bed once, and they spent a few minutes quietly letting the wine seep into their veins before taking on the day.

Patrick crouched by the fireplace, fussing with the wood and the poker and doing mysterious woodsman things to turn the embers beneath the ashes back into flames, while David and Stevie took turns using the bathroom for cold water ablutions – teeth didn’t need hot water and good heavens, David’s mouth desperately needed a clean. Once back downstairs, David made a point of trying to stand as near to the fireplace as he could without getting in Patrick’s way, attempting to soak up the tiny amount of heat being put out by the baby fire. Honestly, this whole no-power situation was getting old.

“I keep hoping that I’ll wake up and all this shit,” David gestured at the window, indicating the snow, “will just magically be gone.”

Stevie sidled up beside him, matching his stance. “We’re probably going to still have remnants of snowbanks in, like, July.”

“This damn country,” David said, frowning and staring out the window at the wall of snow. He missed their view of the farm pastures; the cows were always entertaining, even if only in a _how is this my life_ kind of way.

“Okay, do we want the bad news or the worse news?” Patrick asked from the hearth, sounding rather put out.

David exchanged a slightly alarmed look with Stevie. “Um, neither?”

“Not an option.” Standing from his crouch to lean a hand on the mantle, Patrick looked between them. “All the firewood we stacked by the door is gone.”

“Oh, fuck.” David suddenly understood what the worse news was going to be.

“Mmhm, and the rest of the wood is by the shed. I was actually planning on getting some more in yesterday but someone,” and here Patrick turned to give Stevie the stink eye, which she accepted with a mild expression, “opened a bottle of wine at noon and ruined the rest of my plans for the day.”

“Don’t blame me for your poor life choices, Brewer,” Stevie said, giving him a half-hearted glare. “You’re an adult. You didn’t have to drink almost two bottles of wine all by yourself, and you definitely didn’t have to add weed to it. And the cheap-ass vodka was your idea.”

“It was Drunk Patrick’s idea.”

“And now Sober Patrick must live with the consequences,” Stevie responded, squinting at him. “Like getting more firewood while hungover.”

Patrick sighed and crossed his arms. “I’d ask why me, but I feel that’s a bit rhetorical.”

David draped his hands over Patrick’s shoulders, pinching at the fabric of his shirt. “I love you,” he cajoled, earning himself a slightly exasperated look and a pinch on the ass, both of which he knew he definitely deserved for being so blatant in his wheedling. 

But in the end Patrick acquiesced, albeit begrudgingly, and disappeared briefly to the bathroom while David collected his outerwear. Moving slowly and with obvious care, Patrick got himself bundled up into his winter gear, sliding David’s Dior sunglasses onto his face and holding up a finger to silence David’s perfectly valid protest about abusing his accessories.

“Mine are in the car,” Patrick defended as he pulled on his toque, “under six feet of snow, and it is blindingly bright out. Unless you want to go get the wood, I am wearing your sunglasses.”

Which, okay, that was persuasive. David shut up and zipped Patrick’s coat like he was a child, which made Patrick smile and David gently kissed his upturned mouth. “Thank you for saving us from hypothermia.”

Patrick returned the kiss. “Well, someone’s got to.”

Stevie held the front door open for Patrick, bowing dramatically as he passed and making him laugh. “I’ll be back in twenty. Don’t kill each other before then.”

“Mm-mm, no promises,” David called after him, arms crossed against the cold air.

Closing the door, Stevie leaned against with David as they watched Patrick scale the snow steps, put on his snowshoes, and disappear from view. Again. Letting David stay inside, in the relative warmth and comfort. _Again._

“You’re lucky to have him, y’know.” Stevie’s voice was surprisingly soft as she demonstrated her ability to read minds.

“I’m fully aware of that, thank you.”

“Are you though?”

David gave her a look, half-serious and half-bullshittery. “Yes.”

Stevie just hummed in response, but she bumped her shoulder against him in a semi-affectionate manner, so David took it as a win.

* * *

It was a few hours later that Stevie announced she was going to heat some water to take a sponge bath with, and David felt Patrick deliberately _not look_ at him. Smothering a smile, David made a point of _not looking_ right back. Stevie squinted at them both, eyes shifting suspiciously between them in a way that made David think they weren’t being as subtle as he thought they were.

“It’s fucking cold out there, bud.” Stevie tested the water with a fingertip. “I’m not taking my time. Understood? Ten minutes, maybe fifteen.”

Yeah, they definitely weren’t as subtle as they thought.

David schooled his face into an innocent expression (which, admittedly, wasn’t excellent). “I don’t know what you mean.” Stevie just gave them both a flat look and took her pot of warm water upstairs, towel draped over her shoulder.

They waited until they heard the bathroom door close, listening for the distinct creak of the jamb that didn’t quite fit right, and then simultaneously pounced, tumbling back onto the rumpled blankets of their bed amidst frantically moving hands.

“What do you want?”

Patrick shook his head and pulled David on top of him. “I don’t care – just be fast about it.”

“Mmm, romance,” David laughed into Patrick’s mouth, sliding his hands under his shirt. Patrick laughed right back, making for a poor kiss that David regardless found highly enjoyable because the other participant was his _husband_ , which was still a novel concept that needed to be celebrated as often as possible.

Like, for instance, right now. Quickly.

They were acceptably clean and reclothed and cuddled together on the couch by the time they heard Stevie’s footsteps on the stairs, loud enough to be deliberate, about a quarter of an hour later.

“Are you decent?” she asked, still in the hallway.

David bit down on a smile. “Why wouldn’t we be?” he called back.

Stevie stuck her head around the door frame and shot David an unimpressed look. “I have no idea.”

“Same,” David replied, twirling his foot in a circle where it dangled from his crossed legs. “We don’t deserve that question.”

Patrick held up his phone and gave it a little shake, his face the picture of purity. “I was on Instagram the whole time,” he shrugged, and David coughed a little to cover a laugh.

Rolling her eyes, Stevie walked into the room. “Well, whatever it is that you _didn’t do_ , I hope you _didn’t do_ it somewhere else. I’m sleeping on that couch, thanks.”

Patrick was clearly trying to keep a straight face, but it just wasn’t a skill he had yet honed when referring to sex. Plus, he was an adorable shade of red. “We _didn’t do_ things on the bed. The couch is safe,” he confirmed, his free hand coming up to tug awkwardly on his earlobe. David rubbed his hand along Patrick’s thigh soothingly.

Stevie scrunched up her face, her eyes following the path of David’s hand. “Ugh.”

“Okay, remember that time you literally offered us your apartment to have sex in? This cannot be worse.” David let a tiny bit of actual displeasure colour his voice, raising an eyebrow at her. Like, c’mon now.

“Oh, I don’t care that you had sex when I was out of the room,” Stevie corrected, looking slightly startled and dropping the joke like it burnt. “I’m fully aware that I’m cramping your style. I’m just offended by how disgustingly in love you two are.”

And well, okay, David was completely incapable of passing up that opportunity, so he turned to nose against Patrick’s cheek, hamming up their cuddling with obnoxious smooches. Patrick, his perfect little troll, went right along with it, cooing at him and pressing kisses all over his face until Stevie threw her towel at them.

But before his vision filled with terrycloth, David caught a smile cracking her impassive mask.

* * *

Their attempt at board games did not go well.

It was Stevie’s idea, a slightly desperate-sounding proposition intended to stave off the creeping boredom, because while books were lovely and they were all avid readers, sometimes the brain required a little more engagement and the body a little more movement. So she’d suggested a game and pulled a few options from her bag, and for some unfathomable reason they’d all agreed on Risk.

In retrospect, they should have known better. Patrick was competitive to a fault, Stevie was a shit disturber of the highest order, and David couldn’t ever leave well enough alone, so playing a game as contentious as Risk was going to be, well, _risky_ even at the best of times. But during a snowed-in situation where they’d been in each others’ pockets for days and they were all still nursing hangovers? They really should have known better. Things had gotten a little heated and a lot loud and Stevie literally flipped the board over to stop the arguing and now everyone was curled up on separate pieces of furniture, pretending to be engrossed in their books as they licked their wounds and ignored each other.

David hadn’t read a word in a solid half hour. He kept peeking over the edge of the pages to watch the other two occupants of the room, the writhing of his anxiety intensifying as the stilted silence continued. Patrick’s rounded shoulders and clenched jaw were a sure sign that he was still upset, the wrinkle between his brow prominent enough for David to see from the other side of the room, too far to reach out and smooth it down like he normally would. Stevie had the look she got whenever people around her argued, all small and hollow-eyed, which David hated so much but had never had the courage to ask her about. He’d seen her like that before, in rough bars sometimes or once when Roland had to throw a particularly angry customer out of the office, but this was the first time David had caused it and it was devastating. He felt the iron ball, so masterfully avoided for the past few days, forcefully reassert itself in his chest and he felt helpless to stop it.

Normally he would leave – go for a walk, or run errands, or even just hide out in a different room where the atmosphere wasn’t smothering him in reminders of how much he still really fucking sucked at being a functional, emotionally intelligent human being – but that wasn’t possible now. He was literally stuck in the house unless he felt like learning how to use the snowshoes, and stuck in the room unless he wanted to go freeze his ass off elsewhere.

David knew, objectively, that the walls weren’t closing in, but objectivity had never helped before and it certainly wasn’t helping now. He let his eyes relax out of focus, the words on the page in front of him going blurry as he reached for the breathing exercises that actually did help. _In five_ , he counted, tapping a finger against the inside of his curled-up thigh where Patrick and Stevie wouldn’t see. _Hold five_. _Out seven_. _Hold five_. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat.

“David?” Patrick’s voice was calm and quiet, but with a sheen of concern sitting on top. “You okay?”

And now he’s brought attention to himself, great, excellent, good job all around. David cleared his throat, pulling together a semblance of his usual demeanour. “Yeah, fine.”

He didn’t lift his eyes away from his book though, didn’t meet Patrick’s eyes, which was probably a mistake, and yeah, he could hear the disbelief in the silence that followed. It was an almost tangible thing that radiated from both Patrick and Stevie, allied once again in their determination to look after David’s sorry ass.

Unity through purpose, hurrah.

The silence was interrupted by some rustling, and then a tiny projectile pinged off the side of David’s head. He flinched hard, hands coming up as he lost count of his breathing, and fumbled to catch the joint that Stevie had flicked at him.

“What the fuck?” he breathed, holding it aloft in the palm of his hand. “Is this your solution to every interpersonal squabble?”

Stevie gave him a tight smile. “No. Just when the people involved are trapped in a small space together.” There seemed to be an uncomfortable truth buried in that statement somewhere and David wasn’t sure what to do with it. “Light it up, Rose, and pass to the left,” she concluded, tossing him a bic.

His “left” was Patrick, who was literally sitting in an armchair on the opposite side of the room. David narrowed his eyes at Stevie, whose expression didn’t change one whit. Then he looked at Patrick, who was watching them both with cautious eyes, his book blatantly abandoned in his lap. David held up the joint in a question and Patrick gave a little tilted nod as Stevie dropped down to the mattress again, reforming the first point in their circle. David followed, lighting the joint between his lips, and then Patrick.

As they smoked, David felt himself settling. The weed wasn’t working that quickly, he realised. It was the quiet sociability of passing a joint around a circle which had calmed the previously tense atmosphere far before the weed had any physiological effect. As he settled, David felt his rational thoughts returning. They, the three of them, were fine. It was a stupid fight over a stupid board game and while none of them were particularly blameless for starting it, it was also no single person’s fault. Risk was just stupid and they were all low-key stressed anyway and everyone wanted a shower and a real bed and the freedom to move about their lives – the game was just the straw the broke the camel’s back. David let out a long, slow stream of smoke as he sorted his thoughts out into little boxes, labelling some _anxiety lies_ and others _exaggerations_ and a few _realistic but unlikely_.

He felt a warm weight on his knee, drawing his eyes down. It was Patrick’s hand, resting along the curve of the joint, his thumb moving back and forth slightly over the soft fabric of David’s sweatpants. He looked at it for a long moment, then followed the arm up to Patrick’s earnest face, his big eyes in full apology mode. David shrugged the world’s smallest shrug and let a soft smile escape the confines of his lips, leaning in to press it against Patrick’s matching smile with a quiet hum. Apologies traded and accepted, David relaxed into Patrick’s steady form, nuzzling his nose against his cheek and basking in the reconnection.

Stevie quietly cleared her throat, sounded unsure. Pulling away from Patrick, David turned to look at her and saw she was holding out the gently smouldering joint to pass to him. She wasn’t nearly as small looking anymore, her shoulders set back into their normal slouch instead of curled in protectively, her eyes clear and assertive once again. David smirked at her, nudged her knee with his foot, and took the joint with a nod. She gave him a little smile in return, and David knew they were good.

David didn’t know the rituals Stevie and Patrick had developed for apologising to each other – though he suspected they didn’t include the words _I’m sorry_ anywhere – but he was sure that they would. Or, quite possibly, that they already had; he wouldn’t put it past the to have sneakily made up via facial expressions and eye contact while David had been trying (and failing) to not freak out earlier.

And David knew he was smiling, probably fairly idiotically, but he was revelling in the proof that he’d overreacted. Patrick and Stevie weren’t really angry with him. They weren’t really angry with each other, either. Nothing important was broken, certainly not beyond repair, and this fallout was just a miniscule blip that they worked out without even fucking _talking_.

Sometimes a thorough examination under the bright light of calm detachment was just the thing needed to reveal the lies his brain told him. A little light to shine, a little space to breathe, and suddenly the anxiety just disappeared in a puff of rationalised smoke.

Which is the thought that gave David the idea.

Stevie had just tossed the butt of the joint into the fire when David set his face into what he hoped was a reasonably serious and/or determined expression and said, “Let’s go fuck around in the snow.”

Patrick blinked at him. “Pardon?”

“Outside.” David gestured broadly. “All that snow out there? Let’s go, I dunno, play in it. That’s a thing, right?”

Patrick continued to stare. “You’re joking.”

“I’m not. I’ve been inside for too long, we all have.” He deliberately didn’t look at the Risk board, still upside down on the floor and surrounded by scattered cards and plastic game pieces. Instead, he clapped his hands together and got to his feet, turning to the chair that stored all their outwear.

Stevie looked mildly amused. “I never thought I’d hear you push to go outside for, like, outside reasons.”

“What the hell are _outside reasons_?” 

“Like exercise and sun and fresh air instead of good light for a selfie.” David flipped her the bird and tossed her coat at her.

“Well, we’re all wilting like neglected houseplants, so clearly we need all those things. Including selfie lighting. And the sun will be out for another few hours. So let’s go.”

And that’s exactly what they did, piling on all their gear and bundling up in the decidedly unfashionable layers that only get worn when it’s far too wintery outside to care about one’s appearance. This limit was different for all three of them, with David notably the most stubborn, but fashion was a laughable prospect in the face of six feet of snow, so they all put on their snowpants and full mittens and wool scarves before tromping out the door and up the snow stairs and into the field of white and blue that buried the front lawn.

The ice layer was still too thin to support David or Patrick and they fell through it immediately, each step a comical and Sisyphean struggle against the mass of snow tugging at their thighs and waists. Stevie, her tiny proportions finally coming into favour after years of putting up with David’s obnoxious height advantage, laughed and skittered around on the ice surface above them, her feet only breaking through on every tenth step or so when she moved too quickly or landed too hard. She was almost crying with laughter at them, her laugh-snorts coming into full play, and David couldn’t fault her for it because he could only imagine that the sight of Patrick and him flailing about and attempting to not faceplant as they moved was genuinely fucking hilarious.

Patrick eventually managed to heft himself up flat onto the ice, log-rolling away from the remnants of his struggles amidst Stevie’s peals of laughter. Sprawled on his stomach, Patrick started to army crawl in Stevie’s direction with a mischievous grin on his face and she swore at him, punching her hands through the ice to gather handfuls of snow to pelt at him. It was too powdery to make into snowballs and instead scattered into the wind the moment it left her hands, filling the air with sun-catching glitter that distracted David’s brain away from the game of cat and mouse that Patrick and Stevie seemed to be engaged it.

Having eyed the ice surface and almost immediately given up on the idea of attempting to make it cooperate with his body, David just sort of... sat down where he stood, bending at the knees and letting the snow take his weight as it so chose. It mostly worked and he tilted himself further back into a lean, looking up at the sky with outspread arms and listening to his two favourite people laugh and curse and shriek. The open sky, wide and blue and utterly cloudless, was actively dissolving a weight that had been sitting on his shoulders for days, and he found himself breathing a little easier.

“David! Your husband is an asshole!” Stevie sounded slightly muffled and out of breath, but there was a thread of amusement that she was failing to hide that brought a helpless little smile to David’s face.

“I know, but so are you.” David shrugged, closing his eyes against the bright sun. “There’s a reason you’re friends.”

Her response was a long string of swears, which made David’s smile wider, and Patrick’s laughter rang out in a chaotic harmony. There were some shuffling noises, scraping and rustling and dragging sounds that seemed to be getting closer, so David lazily opened his eyes to watch Patrick and Stevie make their way back over to him in his little snow prison-slash-lounge chair. They were both positively _covered_ in snow, dusted head to toe in white over their bright clothes, and David barked out a laugh in surprise.

“Oh my God, you’re a pair of hooligans, just look at you!”

“Hey,” Patrick protested, sliding on his belly into kissing range and pressing his cold nose against David’s cheek. “You’re the one who told us to _fuck around_.”

David opened his mouth to respond but lost his train of thought as the rumble of noise that had spent the last several minutes steadily getting louder in the expansive quiet of the snowscape suddenly resolved into something comprehensible as an ancient snowplough slowly came into view, trundling down the road.

“Oh shit,” Patrick exclaimed, following David’s gaze. “Finally. Roland mentioned Bob was having a go at it, but I didn’t know whether he’d get out here before the government trucks.”

The plough was moving approximately as fast as Ted the Turtle, fighting to clear the deep snow, but as it got closer David could make out the logo on the side and it was indeed for Bob’s Garage. Bob himself was now visible behind the wheel, the flaps of his _very incorrect_ red-and-black plaid ushanka hat sticking straight out to the sides, and Patrick sat up to raise a hand in greeting. Stevie pumped her hand in the air, miming the pull of the horn-strap, and David almost jumped out of his skin at the noise when Bob obliged.

They sat there for a long time, transfixed by the sight of the plough slowly but surely tearing up the perfectly smooth surface of the snow, cutting a scar that lead back to civilisation. When Bob finally passed the end of their driveway, David let out a quiet sigh of relief – the driveway itself was another hurdle to consider, but that was a problem for later and one David would try to deal with by bribing Ronnie with a lot of body milk before he considered picking up a shovel again. Driveway or not, the road was clear to their house and that meant ambulances and firetrucks and taxis and the pizza guy could get close enough to be of use, and David hadn’t realised how much relief that would bring.

Their quiet little tableau was disrupted eventually when the cold won out, seeping through David’s snowpants and mittens and making him shiver. His thoughts turned back to the house and the fire, and he glanced over his shoulder wistfully as he debated whether it was worth moving yet.

Wait. _What?_

“Oh my God,” David blurted, standing from his lounge and pointing at the house. “Patrick! The lights are on!”

He looked over at Stevie and Patrick, both of whom looked delighted at the prospect of electric lights and central heating and wifi and hot water and all the other modern conveniences they’d been deprived of for the past five days. David certainly was. However, instead of immediately climbing out of the snow and heading inside, he stood and stared at the house for a long minute, revelling in the anticipation despite the excitement dancing through him. Five _fucking_ days. And they survived, more or less intact. David embraced the feeling of success.

“C’mon,” Patrick said, leaning in to kiss David’s cheek. “Let’s go warm up.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yayyyyyyy we’re done! Thanks for tagging along with me, everyone! I greatly enjoyed reading your comments. Also, this is officially the longest fic I’ve ever written and I don’t really know how to feel about that.
> 
>   1. The hungover wake-up scene is one of the first I wrote, back when this fic was just a glimmer in my eye. It’s a personal fave.
>   2. Playing Risk is a risk, especially with friends who are particularly competitive. Don’t say I didn’t warn you. 😐
> 



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